Truth
by Roguewrld
Summary: In 2016, John Sheppard watched Atlantis sink beneath the ocean forever. He planned on preventing that from happening, at any cost. McShep
1. If I gave you the truth

"Unscheduled off-world activation!" The fellow Canadian whose name Rodney had never bothered to learn stared at his screen in confusion. "It's Colonel Sheppard's IDC."

"How about... no?" John waved at the guy, as if to make sure he knew there was only one John Sheppard on this mission.

"He's right, Colonel." Rodney double-checked the sixteen character pass code. "What the..."

"There are six extra numbers."

"I know." Rodney stared at the numbers for a minute, then looked to Elizabeth. "Lower the shield."

"Rodney, that is not John-"

"It's my ATM pin. There's no one in this galaxy that knows that number. Elizabeth, the Gate isn't just used for travel between worlds."

Elizabeth could feel the headache starting, the one she affectionately called Gate Team One. "You think there's an alternate team on the other side of that horizon?"

"We live in the lost city of Atlantis on a planet in the Pegasus galaxy. I'm saying that's more likely than someone miraculously guessing the Colonel's IDC and my six digit, randomly generated pin code." Rodney knew stranger things had happened. Like finding your mission leader frozen in the basement. And that was just in this galaxy. Half of SG-1's mission reports read like a sci-fi TV show. They ran into alternate realities and time travelers on a yearly basis.

Oh, this was going to be a fun headache. "Major Lorne, get a security team in here. We're dropping the shield."

John grabbed Rodney by the elbow. "You don't think that's actually us, do you?"

"Us or a reasonable facsimile of us from another reality." Or robotic clones, but Rodney didn't think John was ready to hear some of the really unusual things that had happened at the SGC in the early years.

"Wonderful." It was a full time job keeping up with one Rodney. He didn't know what he was going to do with two.

Eight fully armed Marines formed a horseshoe around the gate and in the fifteen seconds between them taking position and the shield being dropped, Rodney ran half a dozen different scenarios through his mind: Alternate universes, time travelers, a Genii plot (the last of which was really unlikely, or Rodney would have brought it up before telling them to open the iris). None of them included John Sheppard walking through the gate alone, gray streaking his hair, glasses perched on his nose, and carrying a laptop case.

He took three steps forward and raised his hands in a sign of submission. "Nick."

Lorne hesitated for just a moment, before he stepped forward and started searching their visitor. No one on Atlantis called him Nick. Hell, he didn't think anyone here even knew his first name. "Any weapons?"

"All I brought was my computer and some snacks. I have your Swedish Fish." Indeed, in the laptop bag there was junk food, including a paper sack of Swedish Fish.

"I don't like Swedish Fish."

"I think you mentioned something about needing them to trade for sexual favors." Their temporal visitor grinned.

"Right." Nick pocketed the fish. "He's clean."

At that, the Marines lowered their weapons and the future John walked past them, stumbling more than a little, to where his current self, Rodney, and Elizabeth were standing, staring. Ignoring himself, John pushed his laptop bag into Rodney's arms. "Take care of that." Then he threw up on Elizabeth's shoes and passed out.

---

"I threw up on Elizabeth." John was pretty sure that he'd never been more embarrassed.

"It wasn't actually you, Colonel." Rodney would admit that the look on Elizabeth's face had been priceless, though. "If he even is you."

"He is." Carson tapped his test results. "Ten years older, but naturally, and somewhat the worse for wear."

"I'm amazed you even made it to forty five, Colonel Suicide-Run." And Rodney actually was amazed. The likelihood of losing John, at any moment, kept Rodney awake more often than he'd admit.

There was a slight groan and the man in the bed opened his eyes. "I hurt too much to be dead." He sat up shakily. "Tell me it's late 2005."

"It's late 2005." Carson pulled a pen light from his jacket and peered into John's eyes. "Your pupils..."

"I'm dying." John said it with absolute certainty and a seeming lack of care.

"You're what?" John Sheppard had suspected he'd never live to collect his pension, but it was supposed to be a sudden thing, like maybe in an explosion, or from a battle wound gained in yet another pointless skirmish with the Genni, or from having his life drained to nothing by the Wraith, or, hell, maybe from the venomous bite of a not-snake on their next mission to PX-something-something. That he made it to thirty-five had more to do with sheer dumb luck and the lack of any large-scale military conflict in the eighties and nineties than any true desire to grow old on his part. He was, in the end, his father's son.

"Dying. I'm dying." He sat up in bed. "Or so you tell me, Carson, over and over again. As often as you can. To try and talk me out of my fool's errand."

"Fool's errand?" Rodney sidled up a chair to their guest's bed.

"To save the city." John met his past self's eyes. "I lost her, and it's killing me. Literally."

"Yeah?" His future self was staring at Rodney like he was water in the desert, and suddenly John couldn't stand this for another second.

"Get out," his other self said, with more kindness than John would have given himself credit for. "You're head's about to explode. Go and run. Rodney can help me save the world."

Apparently, he knew himself too well. "He's good at that." John forced himself to show some restraint. He gave Carson a nod and walked calmly out the door, said hello to the marines standing guard at the door, walked calmly around the corner of the hallway out of sight and ran.

---

John was only too glad to get out of the infirmary. Looking at himself in a mirror was a task these days. Looking himself in the eye was a little out of reach. He tracked down Ronon using the internal scanners and joined him on what probably wasn't his first lap around Atlantis' central spire.

They ran in silence, and John was glad. He had no interest in knowing his own future. He had apparently outlived his City and that was one of his worst nightmares.

He was not, despite rumors to the contrary, a clone of Jack O'Neill. The General already had a clone, and, as far as John knew, he was alive and well back on Earth, a college student majoring in history and languages. And if O'Neill Jr. had decided to live out his second life as Dr. Daniel Jackson to avoid competing with his own myth, John didn't know how anyone could expect it of him. John, unlike O'Neill, would probably never save Earth, except in the round about way of not letting the Wraith through the gate. John was happy to stay far away from the planet of his birth, with the best brains Earth could spare, in a city that welcomed him with open arms.

He knows she's not alive, not in any real way. He knows her 'affection' for him is simply a result of the extraordinary strength of his ATA gene. He knows that Atlantis is not a woman, that she's not sentient, that she doesn't love him –but he loves her all the same. He doesn't want to outlive her, and he doesn't want to see her sink back below the ocean, forever. He doesn't want to see her die.

John stopped running and sank to his heels. Ronon stopped in his tracks, and turned back. "You okay?" When John didn't answer, Ronon dropped to the floor and sat beside his taskmaster in silence.

---

When Carson was finally done poking and prodding and left them alone, John spoke. "Go ahead and ask, before you implode."

"I'm dead. Right? I'm dead. That's why I didn't come with you." That was the only explanation. Rodney just hoped he hadn't drown again. John's fondness for suicide missions against orders aside, there was no way the people in charge would have sent John alone if there was any other way.

"Three months ago, from the same thing that's killing me." John leaned back on the pillows. "Which I still haven't forgiven you for, by the way. I had to proof the math for this little trip all by myself."

"The SGC couldn't find anyone to help you?" John gave Rodney his patent smirk. "Never mind. We were doing this on our own." Rodney knew they'd both do anything for Atlantis. They'd already given each other up for her, why not what ever time they had left?

"The City was deemed an acceptable loss. She took the enemy with her. You and I thought that was a crock of shit, even before we started getting sick." John pulled his laptop bag off the bedside table and took out what looked like the kind of necklace teenage hippies wore.

"From what?" Why was John screwing around with jewelry at a time like this?

"We interfaced with Atlantis. The human brain isn't meant to do that." John twisted the charm and Rodney took a closer look. It was a blue crystal dangling from a gold chain. After a minute, John let go of the chain and the crystal stayed suspended in mid air. "After that, the City had to take over some of our neurological maintenance. Not a problem when you're in the control chair for an hour or two a day. Big problem when the one thing keeping you alive is rusting on the sea floor."

"We..." There was something flickering around the charm. "What is that?"

It was a hologram. A beautiful, life sized busty, blonde hologram, dressed in the gray uniform the civilians wore inside the city, now wearing the necklace. "This, my friend, is Ananke. Ananke, are you cohesive?"

The image flickered for a few more moments, before becoming solid. "I am, John." Her image was floating in midair and she seemed to walk down an invisible set of stairs until she was standing on the floor. She was, Rodney noted absently, slightly above the normal height for a woman, and slightly below the normal weight. He was still analyzing the technology that would have gone into creating her when she reached out and touched Rodney's face. "Rodney. It is good to see you again."

"Yes, yes, I'm sure." Rodney couldn't help flinching. She felt real, warm and soft. It was deceptive. If you didn't see her materialize, you'd think she was real. An ethereal beauty but a real woman.

The hologram looked hurt, but dropped her hand. "I disturb you. I understand."

"Sweetheart, could you link up with the city? I've got a lot of work to do." John linked fingers with the hologram and squeezed her hand. "Pull up the ZPM curves and we'll see what we can do about their power bleed."

The hologram flickered out of sight and Rodney stared at the spot where she'd been. "Sex toy?"

"3-d personal tactile holographic mainframe interface."

"So, sex toy."

"Fine. Yes, a sex toy. Radek overwrote her basic programming, but she's still a bit... affectionate."

"Affectionate, right." He was surprised Ananke hadn't kissed John goodbye, if she kissed. If she'd been designing as a holographic call girl, she probably didn't. Rodney wondered if he could get a look at her code, to see how interactive she really was.

"Don't be jealous." John reached out and grabbed Rodney by the wrist. "She's just a machine. You, you're flesh and blood. Flesh and blood I watched die. All we did, everything we gave up? It came down to nothing, Rodney." Rodney absently noticed that there were small, half moon shaped scars on John's forearm. He recognized the shape. When you dug your fingernails into skin, they made those marks, but to do it deeply enough to scar… John hadn't done that to himself. "Atlantis sank to the bottom of the ocean and you died screaming. Cracked the ulna in my wrist while you did it."

'Everything we gave up.' That was a loaded sentence. Rodney tried to uncurl John's fingers from his wrist. They didn't do casual touching anymore, not since they'd stopped the not-so-casual touching. "What happened?"

"I'd be interested to know that myself." They hadn't noticed the door to the infirmary door quietly snick open, or Elizabeth's presence.

"A new enemy, the Grue. What happened was a kind of domino effect, one small thing that ruined everything. If I can find what causes the entropy, we won't lose the city." John still hadn't let go of Rodney's arm and Rodney, for the moment at least, had given up on trying to pry him off. "All your plans, Elizabeth. All gone to waste."

"The city was destroyed." She'd hoped that somehow, it was something else. That maybe it had been the death of a person that had sent him back, but Elizabeth supposed she had known, somewhere inside, that John wouldn't have done this for one person. "How, John?"

He shook his head. "Too much knowledge about the future isn't good for you, Elizabeth. There are some things coming that I have to let happen, even if they aren't nice things."

"What can we do to help?" Elizabeth knew the way they'd lost the City was probably violent and messy, if John wouldn't tell her. She'd try and wring it out of him later.

"I'll need Radek." Out of the corner of his eye, John could see Rodney's look of confusion and cut off the coming rant. "He's an engineer, underneath all the physics. What I'll be doing to the power systems isn't that complex, we don't need to steal Rodney away from his field work. Besides, they're Radek's designs."

"Of course." Elizabeth's eyes were on the grip John had on Rodney. "Afraid he's going to escape?"

"Something like that." John forced himself to let go. "You know Rodney. Turn your back on him and he gets shot, gets stabbed, dies of a degenerative brain disorder..."

"I see." Her A-team was inseparable. Who knew what had happened to Teyla and Ronon, but they'd obviously lost Rodney, if John had been sent alone. "If there's anything I can do, John…."

"I know where to find you." John looked at the clock. "If I can get our kindly Scot to let me go, I need to get down to the labs and help Radek."

"You haven't called him yet." John had said he had the same degenerative brain disorder that Rodney's future self died of. Maybe it affected the memory first.

"I don't have to. Ananke will have gone to see him already."

---

Radek reached for his coffee mug and found it empty. He stared forlornly at the bottom of the mug then set it back down. Rodney had been out of the lab for a few hours, so there was possibly coffee still in the carafe, but it would be cold and even if it wasn't, the pot was all the way across the room. If he waited, Rodney would come back and make a fresh pot, then Radek wouldn't have to move and leave the power curves. Even if he couldn't get Rodney to actually bring him coffee, which, Radek knew was a one in a million chance, he at least wouldn't have to make it.

He went back to his work, until the sound of glass clinking on ceramic distracted him. Someone was pouring coffee into his cup. "One sugar, muj miley?"

"Yes, please, Krista. Packets are in-" For a moment, he'd forgotten where he was. That voice, it sounded so like his wife's. She'd said that exact thing, so many times, just like that. But Krista was dead. He'd buried her the month before Jack O'Neill had found the way station in Antarctica. Radek slowly raised his eyes from the screen. There was a blond woman putting sugar in his coffee. He'd never seen her before, and Radek prided himself on knowing everyone. With Rodney running around off-world, Radek ran the labs day to day. He made an honest effort to learn their people's names, and he definitely knew their faces. "You do not belong here."

"Doctor Sheppard will need you in the ZPM room shortly, after he is released from the infirmary." She set the paper packet beside the cup, the little strip of paper she'd torn off tucked inside the larger piece, just like Krista had always done, then stirred the coffee so the sugar didn't settle on the bottom.

"Who are you?" She set the spoon down on the packet, so the coffee from the spoon wouldn't leave a puddle on the table. When he'd had to type his papers on a typewriter, he'd lost more than one page to coffee stains. Krista had put a stop to that. In Czechoslovakia, she'd used a plate, but in America, the little paper packets were handy and disposable.

"I am yours." She pressed the cup into his hands. "I've missed you, Radek."

His hands were numb around the coffee cup. This was a cruel joke. His wife was dead, and she had looked nothing like this... this blond bombshell that looked like she'd walked out of Rodney's fantasies. "Who are you?"

"The Alterrans named me Ananke, and that is what the Lantians called me as well." The woman sat beside him. "I am the AI holographic mainframe interface. You found me, overlaid my original design with something more... human. Something familiar."

The gate activation. She'd come with the other Sheppard, from the future. "Why would I do such a thing?"

"For Atlantis. The city was designed to interact with the Alterrans. They all possessed what you call the ATA gene. But among the Lantians, the natural gene was rare and the artificial gene doesn't always take. You got sick of being ignored, while Atlantis bowed and scraped for Doctors Sheppard and McKay."

"Colonel. Colonel Sheppard." An alternate reality, then. The man who'd come through the gate must have been from an alternate reality and not from the future.

"Not anymore." The stranger, Ananke, that was what she'd called herself, squeezed his knee. "Drink your coffee, Radek. John will need us soon."

---

It took a while to convince Carson that there was nothing he could do for John, and that there was no reason to keep him cooped up in the infirmary when there was work he should be getting on with. Radek was already with the ZPM, and the power consumption rates for the past six months were up on the monitor. John could see his hands shake a little when he lifted them from the keyboard.

"She came to see you."

"Yes." The ceramic cup was in pieces on the floor and coffee covered one wall which, luckily, had no circuitry exposed.

"I couldn't have stopped her, even if I'd tried. She loves you."

"She is machine. Machine I make to act like my dead wife, yes?" Radek pushed his glasses up his nose with one finger. "I am dead in your future, or I would have made this journey with you. I think I am glad I am dead."

"It wasn't like that. She's not a... sex toy. The original interface was degraded. You couldn't interact with it." How must it have seemed to Radek, to see Ananke's body language with out any clue why he'd done it? "There was no time to build a new overlay so you used a hologram template from the entertainment database. The generator program worked like it was meant to. It programmed all the subtle cues you wanted in a woman, all those little things Krista did. You could never quite weed out the framework that made her love you, there wasn't enough time."

"It is no less disturbing." She'd gone away when he'd started to cry. Radek was grateful for that. "You have a program for improving power usage?"

"Afraid it's not that easy, Radek. Got a soldering iron?"

---

"You are distracted." Teyla loomed above him, a concerned look on her face. "And possibly concussed. Should I call Dr. Beckett?"

"M'fine." John thought about getting up, then decided not to. He'd just lay here, humiliated, for a while. He'd gotten used to Teyla beating him, but she usually had to at least try.

"You are not fine." Teyla dropped into sitting position beside him and folded her sticks in her lap. "I have dropped you four times, and you ran yourself into the ground this afternoon."

"Let me guess. A little Setedan told you." John folded his arms behind his head. "It's our... guest. Carson says he's me, but he's not. Have you seen him yet?"

"I have not." Or at least, she had seen nothing but the bottoms of his shoes. "He has been working with Dr. Zelenka."

"There was no rank on his collar, and he was wearing glasses. Glasses! I'm a pilot, Teyla, and a soldier. That guy... he's soft."

"You are not made of stone, Colonel." She was tempted to peer under his eyelids. Maybe she'd hit him too hard.

"I'm not him either." There were only two reasons John could think of why he'd resign his commission and go back to academia. One: They'd forced him to abandon the city, and he'd done something to torpedo his career. Two: He'd done something equally stupid with Rodney, and they'd forced him to resign or even court martialed him. "I should not be the sole survivor of this foursome, Teyla. And he came alone, so I must be."

Teyla gave a small mental sigh. Only John Sheppard would feel guilty about the deaths of three people still living. "This is a war. We are soldiers."

"He's not."

"Perhaps you should ask why." He would not, Teyla knew that. They would have to do it for him.

End of Part One


	2. Just a word of advice

"Rodney, is the future counterpart of my chief military officer fixing the plumbing?" Elizabeth was a diplomat, not a plumber, but she'd seen her father put in a new bathroom once and it looked like John was putting common household copper piping into the ZPM console.

"I have no idea." Rodney hit the comm. "Radek, what the hell are the two of you doing?"

"Leaky pipes in ZPM console. We are losing two percent of power to ten thousand year old pipes." Radek slid out from underneath the console. "John brought schematics. We will be done tomorrow."

"I know you boys are busy," Elizabeth cut in. "But you've been under there for six hours."

"Really?" John looked at the strange watch that Carson swore was welded on but that John had removed easily for his x-rays. "I think it's time for a break, Radek."

Radek slid his Cold Heat back into his pocket and started to pack up. "She will come back."

"Can't stop her."

"I will learn to live with it."

-----

The purple creature from PK-83412 made really good steaks. John hadn't have one in almost two years, so when he'd seen that the mess was serving them, he'd gladly taken a helping, along with the blue potatoes they grew on the mainland. He was just cutting in when the two seats across from him were taken. "Checking up on me?"

"We would be remiss not to." Teyla gave him her diplomat's smile.

"You're upsetting Sheppard." Ronon stole a potato off John's plate. "We want you to stop."

"I've been here twelve hours! I said less than ten sentences to the man." John pointed his fork at Ronon. "Get your own, Dex. I stood in line fifteen minutes for these."

"You never call me Dex." Ronon bit into what the Americans called a French fry but one of the Frenchmen had told him was actually a Dutch dish.

"I'm not a soldier anymore, you're not under my command." John, deciding his food was probably safe for the moment, set down his fork. "Let me guess. He wants to know why I resigned my commission."

"I think the glasses bother him more." Ronon studied this version of his taskmaster. Aside for the gray hair and wrinkles, he seemed to be in passable condition. He'd seen older soldiers in worse shape, but who knew how the humans ran their military? They seemed to have all sorts of bizarre rules of conduct.

"I'm still a pilot, if that's the problem, just not for the Air Force." John, who had been scanning the room and seemed to have found who he was looking for, reached down below the table and retrieved his bag. "But that's not what's bothering him, is it? He wants to know why I'm alive when the rest of you are dead."

"He does seem to be dwelling on it." Teyla watched John as he dug around in his bag. He finally unearthed what he was looking for: a small round metal tin, with foreign writing on it.

"That's because you're not dead." John twisted the tin open and sniffed. "Either of you, as far as I know. Haven't made the trip to Pegasus in six months. When the expedition pulled out of this galaxy, you both stayed behind. To quote, 'Earth is a nice place to visit, John, but we have no desire to live there.' I understood. I didn't want to go either. 'Scuse me." Taking the tin with him, John walked over to the table where a few of the scientists sat.

"Dr. Kasanagi." John slid in beside the quiet Japanese scientist. "I have something for you."

Miko blinked at him a few times. Everyone knew about their visitor, but he'd spent most of the day cooped up with Dr. Zelenka. "For me?"

He extended the tin to her. "For you. Thank you for everything you did for me, Miko."

"Did for you?" Miko opened the tin and smelled, then sniffed again as if she couldn't believe her nose. "Matcha. From home." They had tea here, and she'd brought some as well, but the good stuff was long gone and it was hard to get more.

He patted her arm, then went back to Ronon and Teyla. "As I was saying. You're not dead, and I did my damnedest to keep Rodney alive long enough to come with me, but I'm not a doctor. I'm an engineer." He picked up his fork again. "I've missed you guys, by the way. Been a long year since we lost the City, cooped up in the Mountain. Never thought I'd think of Tokyo as uncrowded."

"You still have not told us why you left your military." Teyla noticed he'd dodged the question.

"You're right, I haven't." John took a bite of his dinner and let the alien taste settle on his tongue. "And I'm not going to. I'm here to save Atlantis, not disrupt the time line. I've already changed too many things. The next ten years are going to be different just because I'm here and I want them to be different in good ways."

"Sheppard,"

"No." John pointed his fork at Ronon again. "I liked my life, until we lost Atlantis. I had a nice apartment, a cat, and they let me build and pilot experimental space craft. You know, we'd been to another galaxy before we set foot on Mars." They gave him blank looks. "The planet next door. Imagine never having gone to the planet next door."

"Humans are strange." Ronon stole another fry.

"I've missed you, Dex, but steal anymore of my food and I'm stabbing you with my fork." John went to work on his steak. "Are you done interrogating me?"

"For now." Teyla stood, that diplomat's smile on her lips again. "Come. We will get you some greasy potatoes of your own, Ronon, before our visitor becomes violent."

-----

At about 3 am, John woke up out of a sound sleep to find a woman standing over his bed. He was very proud of himself for not shouting and in the same instant he reached for the pistol he kept in the headboard. "I have removed your weapon, John."

"Really. Well, wasn't that considerate." The knife under the mattress was gone too. He slowly sat up. It wasn't everyday he woke up to find an attractive woman he didn't know standing over him, but it wasn't the first time. "And you would be?"

"Ananke, AI tactile holographic mainframe interface. I wished to observe you as you were in 2005." Ananke produced his pistol from the thigh holster she wore, but when he checked it, there was no clip in it. "You could not harm me, but the damage to the walls would be troublesome to repair."

"Right." An artificial intelligence, walking around in a holographic shell, who had wanted to watch him sleep. Creepy, very creepy. "Do we know each other?"

"Yes." She placed the clip at his feet. "You and Radek retrieved me from the mainframe before the city sank. You refused to leave without taking some part of it with you."

"So... you're the living, sentient embodiment of Atlantis. Did you chose this form?" God, he was never going to live this down if Atlantis thought this was what he was looking for in a woman.

"No. The physical body you see is that of the Alterran's top female adult entertainer. It was redundantly stored and easy to retrieve." Ananke seemed to be staring at his form beneath the blankets, twisting the crystal on the necklace she wore. "I don't suppose you'd allow me to observe your current physical form, for comparison?"

"Naked?" The hologram nodded. "How about no? Why are you even here? Won't my evil twin miss you?" No way was he getting naked for the creepy hologram. In fact, he was getting her out of here as soon as possible. Apparently, his taste in company had changed a bit.

"John asked me to entertain myself this evening. He has other plans."

-----

The door chime dragged Rodney's attention from the new power usage curves. Those new copper pipes really had made a difference, although Rodney wasn't sure how yet. "Whoever it is, go away!"

The door slid open, despite the multilayer locks he had on it. Atlantis would only do that for John, but there were two of them now. Rodney turned around in his chair. "Doctor Sheppard, I presume." John didn't say a word, but the door slid shut and Rodney heard the manual lock click as it relocked. "Can I do something for you?"

John strode across the room and pulled Rodney to his feet, then pushed him against the wall. "No talking."

"Hey!" But then Rodney didn't have much to say, because this stranger (and he was a stranger, no matter how much he looked like Colonel Sheppard) was kissing him like they'd been lovers for years – and for all Rodney knew, maybe they had. After the twenty seconds it took to get over the shock enough to calculate exactly how much of a bad idea this was, Rodney shoved John away. "What is the matter with you?"

"I'm trying to get you into bed." John was still standing too close and his arms were still looped around Rodney's waist. "You're not making it very easy for me."

"With good reason! Do you remember the conversation we had about why this was a bad, horrible, dangerous idea?" Rodney did, the two of them sprawled across Rodney's bed, the last night they'd spent on Earth before boarding the Daedalus. "Setting aside the fact that you were having an affair with a man, which, given the nature of this project, they probably wouldn't kick you out for, top-secret knowledge and revenge being what it is, you were fraternizing with a member of your gate team!"

"I'm a civilian, and seeing as how I'm existing outside of time, I think I'm outside the chain of command." John traced the line of Rodney's jaw. "Now, don't tell me you don't want to have sex with me, because I know you'd be lying. I've got less a month to live, Rodney, and I'll spend a chunk of that time stark raving mad. Are you really going to tell me to leave?"

"I should." Rodney let his head fall back and hit the wall. "Why are you doing this?"

"What?" John leaned in a little closer and dropped a line of kisses down Rodney's neck. "You really thought it was over? That I was just going to forget about you, settle down with the first non-Ascended woman to catch my eye? Didn't work that way. You look, sound," John nuzzled behind Rodney's ear, "and smell a lot like someone I spent the better part of the past ten years sleeping with. I have less than a month to live, I gave up my life and my entire world to come and save you and the city. Now, you don't have to provide a dying man with some small comfort during his last few days. Just say the word and I'll go knock on Ronon's door."

"That's... actually disturbingly hot." Rodney let John's hand drop and tilted his neck to the left, to give John better access. "But don't go anywhere. As you probably know, I'm undersexed and easy."

"We'll work on the first part," John's hand was starting to undo Rodney's belt. "But believe me, Rodney, the second thing? That's the part of the charm."

-----

"Elizabeth." The future John flung himself into one of the chairs in her office. "Don't send them. Send another team later."

"Can you tell me why?" Gate Team One was set to deploy in ten minutes. She didn't have time to play 'Guess the Future.'

"If you send them through the gate, they're going to be gone a long time. They'll find Ford and then they'll be captured, first by Ford and his motley crew, then by the Wraith. Teyla and Ronon will end up hooked on the enzyme and Rodney will nearly give himself a stroke trying to escape after we were forced to leave him behind. But..." John leaned forward, hands braced on her desk. "But, they'll start what amounts to a civil war and destroy two hive ships."

Wonderful. Just wonderful. "What happens if I don't send them?"

"In the end, the infighting keeps the Wraith busy for a few years, but they have to eat, Elizabeth. They always stopped killing each other long enough to eat." John sat back in his chair, the stylus from her tablet somehow in his hand. "There'll be other chances to start the in fight. We're 98 sure Ford dies on the hive ship and what Rodney does fundamentally weakens his constitution, which is why I outlived him even though I had a deeper connection to the city. Think fast, Elizabeth. They deploys in about eight minutes."

Elizabeth rubbed at her temples. There was that headache again. "John, so help me. If the Wraith show up two weeks from now, I'm sending you up to start my civil war."

"Knew I could count on you, Elizabeth." If nothing else, even if he failed completely, next time he went back in time Rodney would be with him and he wouldn't do what he'd done last night.

"You're late." John was checking his pack when Ronon strolled in, five minutes before they were scheduled to leave.

"Am not." He dropped onto the bench beside Rodney. He sniffed once, did a double take, then clapped Rodney on the back and said something in Setedan that Rodney really hoped had been mistranslated.

"I'm sorry, did you just say, congratulations on bagging an officer?" John couldn't believe his ears and his hands froze, halfway through tying a knot.

Teyla looked like she was stifling a laugh and Rodney looked like he wanted to sink into the floor. "That isn't a traditional saying on your world?"

"No, it's not." John let the stings fall from his fingers. "So. The other plans that sent the porn-star AI to my room last night? That would be you, Rodney?"

"Apparently, and how do you do that?" He shot Ronon an exasperated look. "It's not like I didn't shower!"

"Perhaps this is a discussion best kept for another time?" Teyla had the strong desire to smack Rodney across the head. What had possessed him to sleep with John's future counterpart? No, never mind. Men were men, no matter what their race.

"No, now's good. Christ, Rodney, what the hell were you thinking?" It hurt, why did it hurt? What they'd had, those weeks, it wasn't supposed to have meant anything. John didn't let anyone get that close, not anymore.

"Gee, Colonel, I don't know. Maybe that someone who looks a hell of a lot like you was pushing me against the wall and-"

Teyla clapped a hand over Rodney's mouth. "Rodney, this is not the time or the place for this. We must prepare to go into the field."

John touched his earpiece. "Copy, Elizabeth. We're not going anywhere." The look he leveled at Rodney was a combination of hurt and barely concealed anger. "What happened to 'the worst idea we ever had'?"

"He's not you, Colonel." Rodney threw his pack in his locker and marched out of the departure room without another word.

John stood frozen in place for a minute, until they all heard the transporter at the end of the hall initialize, then he calmly put his things away and walked out. Only another warrior could see the tension he carried everywhere.

"Wrong Sheppard." Ronon nodded to himself. "He's going to kill me, isn't he?"

"It is a distinct possibility, but I am more concerned with the other repercussions of what just occurred." Teyla lay back on the bench and stared at the ceiling. "The Colonel and Doctor McKay were in a relationship, prior to re-establishing contact with their home world."

"I thought they were just sex-blind." It had been a condition common enough among academics and soldiers on Seteda. Professionals trained to match people with opposing obsessive traits paired them off to ensure every able-bodied citizen had a partner and reproduced, especially when these two functions had to be performed by different people.

"The Colonel's people forbid fraternizing between comrades." As John had explained it to her while very drunk one evening, that was actually a bigger issue than the violation of America's sexual mores.

"That's stupid."

"It is indeed."

-----

The door to the quarters they'd given him slammed open then shut. John hadn't heard a door slam in Atlantis since, well ever. There was only one person it could be. "Hello, John."

"You slept with my scientist!" The man he'd been a decade ago was livid.

"No, I slept with a scientist you gave up claim to six months ago."

His evil twin had a point. "You know what I mean." John wanted to hit something. Preferably that smug bastard with his face.

"Let me guess. You had the ah-ha moment, even without Aidan. All those years of not caring, of keeping everyone at arms length, of trying not to get attached to another Natasha, gone down the tubes. Congratulations, John. You're no longer the cold detached bastard everyone left. You actually care." He shoved a chair in his younger self's direction. "Sit down."

"I don't want to sit, I want you to keep those callous-free hands off my physicist!" John kicked the chair over. "Why? Just tell me the truth."

"Why did I have sex with Rodney, or why is it Doctor and not General Sheppard?" Said Doctor put the chair back on its feet.

"The second thing." John sat down in the chair as if he were being forced at gunpoint. "Then the first thing."

"Why does it matter?"

"We walked away and never looked back. I want to know why I looked back." He'd joined the Air Force to forget about the years he'd spent in academia. He hadn't done any math not needed to fly an airplane in almost a decade, and he hadn't engineered any thing more complicated than a house of cards in just as long.

"If I told you we'd been discharged for our relationship with Rodney, what would you do? Transfer him off the team? Find a girlfriend?" The older man reached out and put a hand on John's shoulder. "Wouldn't change a thing. One day, you'd still wake up next to him."

"Were we? Answer me!" John knocked the hand away.

"No. I resigned in protest of a military operation. Feel better?"

Okay, now John felt like an ass. "A little."

"As for why I slept with Rodney... You aren't. Yet. Why should both of us suffer?" He gave John the grin that had always given their Cos fits. John suddenly got why.

"Can I trust you?" John trusted his own judgment but this man was ten years and a million decisions away from him.

"You can trust I will do whatever is necessary to save Atlantis."

Well, wasn't that comforting. Not.

-----

Elizabeth, who often wandered the corridors when she couldn't sleep, found John – the future John - sitting at the computer console, an arm thrown around the blond woman seated beside him. "Doctor Sheppard?"

"Evening, Elizabeth." John didn't look up from the screen. "You can call me John, you know."

"Fine. John, are you going to introduce us?"

The woman extended a hand to Elizabeth. "Ananke, AI tactile holographic mainframe interface."

"Hello." Elizabeth shook the hand and decided not to ask why their mainframe interface looked like a playboy bunny. "It's almost dawn."

"I am not in need of rest and John refuses to return to his quarters. I am ensuring that he does not accidentally harm the city." The AI gave John a long look that spoke volumes. Elizabeth could tell they'd had this argument before, probably often.

"We're trying to find the pressure point, what causes the eventually destruction of the City. Unlike some people, who'll live forever unless her creator deletes her out of spite," And this time it was John staring at the AI, "I have a limited time frame. I have about three days before organ failure and insanity sets in, and then I'm going to die a slow and painful death."

"You don't sound very upset."

"I've known for almost a year this was coming." Death and John Sheppard were old friends. This isn't the way he'd always thought he'd go out, but it was a good a way as any, dying for the city.

"Gate Team Six found some interesting garbage on that planet you told me not to send Major Sheppard's team to. Empty vials of what Carson tells me was the Wraith enzyme." He'd been right. Elizabeth could only imagine the chaos that must have reigned with her A-team missing. "Is there anything else coming up?" Any other worlds she should avoid, any lives she could save?

"Nothing I can let you interfere with, Elizabeth. If the Civil War starts a few months later, no big deal, but somethings, somethings you just have to let happen." John flexed his right hand. "You can just... fix them a little."

If Elizabeth had paid very a careful attention to the scene before her, she would have noticed John's left hand in a tight, white knuckle grip on Ananke's arm and his pupils dilated from pain.

-----

He left John asleep, but when Rodney came back, fully outfitted to go on their next mission, John was awake. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but don't you ever sleep?"

"I'll sleep when I'm dead." By not having their little adventure with Ford, the weeks they'd spent with him had disappeared from the mission rosters and the time line of future events had been bumped up. Gate Team One was on their way to their next mission. "Have fun looking for a ZPM."

"Do we find one?" Rodney stood at the foot of the bed and took a moment to enjoy having John naked in his bed again, even if it wasn't exactly the John he wanted.

"Finding a ZPM is the easy part. Keeping it is a little trickier." John rolled over so that he was lying on his back. "Rodney, you have to go with him."

"What?"

"You have to go with him." John reached down and snagged Rodney's pack from beneath the bed, then tossed it to him. "Just this once, Rodney, do as I tell you."

End Part Two


	3. Closer to wrong no further from right

"Just, um, back out if you encounter anything problematic."

John stopped in his tracks and looked back at Rodney. That wasn't what you wanted to hear right before you walked through the mysterious door. "Problematic?"

"Yeah, like poisonous atmosphere, acid atmosphere, no atmosphere. Hey," Rodney pointed at the camera. "It's a MALP on a stick; only shows you so much."

John grimaced, then took a deep breath. "Okay, here goes." He slowly pushed his P-90 into the field and watched it glow blue around the gun. "Weird!" Mentally crossing his fingers, he pushed his right hand forward into the field. "Yeah, it's kinda hurting my hands a little."

That was all Rodney had to hear. "Okay, so get out of there."

John tried to pull his hand back, then tried again. "I'm trying to, but it's pulling me in."

Ronon grabbed the back of John's vest and braced his feet. "I got you." He was not letting his taskmaster get sucked into some weird vortex, especially after the scene he'd caused yesterday.

"Okay, come on, get me out of here." Ronon had a grip of steel, and John was still being pulled forward.

Teyla latched herself on and Ronon was glad for the help. "I'm tryin'."

"Well, try harder." Okay, now his hand was really hurting.

Damn it, why hadn't John warned him? Or maybe this hadn't happened to him? Rodney vaguely remembered John talking to him when he'd come in at dawn, talking about how he'd already changed things. "No, no, no, we proved this – it shouldn't be happening!"

Why did everything in this galaxy want to kill him? "Well, it is! It's pulling me in!"

Teyla could see they were losing ground to the doorway. "It's too strong!"

John's face was centimeters from the barrier. He turned and gave his team a panicked look and Rodney knew he couldn't let them keep trying. "Don't touch the barrier!"

It was a command, and Teyla and Ronon obeyed because while Teyla and Rodney were technically equal in the hierarchy, Rodney was John's second in all the ways that mattered. That didn't mean Ronon was happy about it. "Why did you tell us to let him go?"

This wasn't happening. Any minute he was going to wake up and this was all going to be a dream. No, no Rodney knew it wasn't a dream. This was happening, but for some reason that naked bastard in his bed hadn't said a word! "Because you weren't going to stop and the last thing we need is both of you getting pulled in with him."

"Why would the Ancestors create something that would do this?" Teyla had learned, in two years with the humans, that while their Ancestors were not as pure as snow, even their darkest actions had a purpose. Even the nanovirus was a weapon, to deprive the Wraith of food. It was a cruel and bitter thing, but it had a point.

"I don't know." Okay, he had to think. He was Rodney McKay, and when he wasn't destroying planets he was brilliant.

"Figure it out or you're going in after him!" Ronon wasn't leaving John on the other side of what ever that thing was.

"OK, that is not helping! Obviously the portal reacts..." Rodney trailed off. Go with him. That's what John had said, go with him. He grabbed the camera and stared at the image. The memory card was full. Time dilation, it had to be, and he had to go. Now. "Give me your knapsacks and empty your pockets – everything you think he might need to survive."

"Wh-"

Rodney cut Teyla off. "It is a time dilation field, which means that time is passing much faster on the other side of the portal than it is here for us. Tell Zelenka that. He'll figure the rest out."

"Where are you going?" If Rodney was going back to the jumper, she would accompany him, but that wasn't what he had in mind. Teyla could see that gleam in his eyes.

"Every moment we stand here debating this, literally hours could be going by for Colonel Sheppard relative to us." Rodney had discovered, upon opening his knapsack, that his guest had repacked it. It was full of food. He pitched it through the portal. "Teyla, go back to the Puddlejumper and radio Atlantis. Tell them what's going on, then bring back anything you think we can use. Emergency rations, medical kit. Anything you can think of. Get extra batteries for the camcorder. Press Record, shove it through and hold for three seconds. No more, no less. It'll give Zelenka what he needs to figure out the exact dilation."

"You're actually going through?" Ronon hadn't meant it. If anyone was going, it should be him.

Rodney ignored him, and kept talking. He was good at that. "If we're still there, that should give us plenty of time to record a detailed message." If he hurried, if he talked very fast, maybe only a few hours or days would go by.

Teyla didn't like the sound of that. "What do you mean if you are still there?"

"Look, depending on the compression ratio inside the field, there's a very good chance we may have used up the supplies we've sent through by the time you get back. I know it's hard to get your head around, but what it means is we have to …"

She understood. She was no fool. "It means we must hurry."

"Right. Go-go-go-go-go-go-go." Rodney watched her go, then turned his attention to Ronon. "Don't follow. Wait for Teyla. Zelenka will figure it out. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

"Do not follow, Ronon." And then Rodney walked through the field and didn't look back.

-----

Elizabeth was going to kill him. "What is the matter with you?" She was almost screaming, she knew it. Only Rodney and John did this to her.

John turned slowly. "They're in, I take it?"

"Oh, you bet they're in. And you're going to get them out! Now."

"We can't get them out now. We have to wait for," John glanced at his watch. "Another two and a half hours. We should go through the doorway at 5:17 PM."

Elizabeth just knew that with two John Sheppards kicking around she was going to have a stroke or a heart attack. "Talk quickly."

"You'll want Carson. And Zelenka, if you can get him in the jumper."

-----

"Well, it's about time." John was sitting against the wall of the cave, looking irritated. "What took you so long?"

"I hate to tell you this, John, but it's just been a couple minutes out there."

"My life has become a bad sci-fi movie." John looked absolutely miserable. "By my watch, I've been here thirty three hours."

Okay, this was bad. Time was flying in here. It had been, at most, three minutes since John had been dragged through the field. That meant that a minute was roughly equal to eleven hours. "I've got good news and bad news."

"Good news first." John took a swig from one of the canteens that had shown up last night, then offered it to Rodney, who shook his head.

"The good news is the other John seems to know exactly what's going on. He told me to follow you."

"Let's hear it for my evil twin." He trusted the evil twin in two areas: He wouldn't hurt Rodney, and he wouldn't hurt Atlantis. This involved Rodney, so John would give him the benefit of the doubt.

"The bad news is," Rodney dropped to the ground beside John. "We aren't going to able to wait for them here. Rescue is going to be a long time in coming. The time dilation is five seconds out there for every minute in here."

Okay, so maybe he couldn't trust his evil twin to protect Rodney. "He just let you follow me in?"

"He told me to follow you." Rodney unwrapped a power bar. "Whatever is supposed to happen in here, it has to happen."

-----

They'd been there three months when Rodney crawled into his bed in the middle of the night. "You know the worst part of this? The waiting. He sent me in after you because... because I didn't let anyone follow you the first time. This is some kind of passive-aggressive revenge, ten years after the fact."

"It's not passive-aggressive. I don't do passive-aggressive." John scooted back against Rodney, figuring, what the hell? Help was still weeks away, even in the best scenario Rodney had come up with. "This is the special hell, Rodney. I'm not good at waiting. At least you're never boring."

"And every woman we meet falls madly in love with you. For two people as unbalanced as we are, we're remarkably consistent." Rodney stared at the back of John's head. It was blocking his view of the wall, or he would have stared at that. "I should explain why I was sleeping with him."

"I don't want to hear this, Rodney."

"Too bad." Rodney took John's right hand in his and started rubbing his fingers. Rodney only had the future John's ability to type as guarantee that there was no serious permanent damage. "He came into my room and threw me against the wall. I'm usually more of a convenient fuck than the true object of someone's affections. He really wanted me, and I don't understand why."

"Rodney, come on. Have a heart." He didn't want to get into this. They're not the kind of men that have best friends, but that's what they are. They weren't the kind of men who should get involved, but they'd gotten involved in the past, and, if you believe the future is already written, then they would be again.

"That, and he told me if I wouldn't comfort a dying man he'd go to Ronon." Rodney poked John in the ribs. "I always knew you had the hots for him."

"Please. Everyone has the hots for Ronon." Half of Atlantis, and that included Elizabeth, was just waiting for some sort of orgy-inducing spore to invade Atlantis so they could bag Ronon.

"They were lovers for ten years. I can't imagine you keeping me around that long just for terrific sex." Rodney had had relationships with what he considered terrific sex that didn't last ten weeks, so he knew that wasn't how the other John had dealt with Rodney's admittedly acidic personality.

"Hate to tell you this, buddy, but you weren't exactly the best I ever had."

"I'm not the one who had an alarming tenancy to fall asleep in the middle." John's fingers felt like ice. Rodney was sure some of the smaller blood vessels had been damaged. He'd probably have poor circulation for the rest of his life in this hand. "I'm not asking for some grand confession. I wouldn't know what to say even if I got one. Just admit it was something."

"It was something." John ran his hand up Rodney's thigh. "The worst part of this is, I asked him. I actually asked him why he wasn't in the Air Force anymore, and if he'd said to me, 'They kicked me out because I was sleeping with Rodney', I'd still be lying here in bed with you, thinking of what I want to do with you."

"I'm just irresistible like that." There was just a touch of false bravado in Rodney's words, but he licked at John's neck and gently bit his earlobe.

"And for your information, the reason I kept falling asleep was the fact that between losing the ZPM and pretending to blow up the city, the command staff as a whole got about twenty minutes of sleep." John sat up and shucked off his tunic. "Can we have sex now?"

Rodney chuckled. "The best thing is, as far as I can tell, you never change."

-----

When they got back, he let Rodney have the first bath and went back to the cabin to wait for him. Teer was already there. "You've been gone over a day."

"Rodney and I went out to the portal. There were supplies there. The jumper's back from Atlantis. It won't be long now." John opened one of the knapsacks, eager to see something processed, wrapped up in foil and full of refined sugar.

"There are people here who care for you." He could have been killed by the Beast, and who but her would ever know?

"Sorry, we should've told somebody."

"I knew." John Sheppard was not the man she had always expected. He and his companion hated it here, and wished only to leave. How could either of them possibly help?

"Is that some special power of yours you haven't told me about?" John had seen stranger things.

"Yes." He was thick headed, and his hair never lay flat! What a fool she'd been her entire life, pining for this man.

"Oh."

"As Hedda has the power to heal, I am able to see images in my mind. It's not uncommon for those on the path to ascension to gain such abilities." He was in love with the obnoxious man, even if he didn't know it yet. The future reshaped itself before her eyes. This was an altered time she lived. Something had changed. Still, John was the One. He had to be. "I was the one who sent Avrid to find you."

"You did?" Why did everyone around him seem to know the future and try and shape it to their will?

"Because I knew you were coming that night, and I knew where you would be in the field; and I have known since I was a child that you would sit here with me as you do now. I've been able to close my eyes and see your face my entire life, John. You are the one." John was staring at her wide-eyed and Teer knew she'd given a good speech.

"The one what?" No, no. No more alien maidens. He'd promised Rodney.

"The one who will lead us to ascension." She had, at one time, hoped for more than that, but once the other had entered the picture, she'd given up that hope.

"Oh." Thank god that was all. "I was a little worried there for a minute."

In her visions, this was to be the night. Now, her chastity seemed silly. "Time flows differently now. Not in it's speed, but in it's content. You were to come alone, John Sheppard. You were to come alone and be with me, but now that future is gone. Still, in the coming days, once you have defeated the Beast, we will ascend together – all of us."

"You mean all of you."

There was no chance of convincing this man to join them in Ascension. There was too much tying him to the world. "Yes, of course. You will defeat the Beast and we shall ascend."

"I don't know how that's gonna happen, Teer. I really don't. Look, I've been up against that thing twice. I don't see how a third time's gonna turn out any different.

Teer smiled at him, and it was a sad smile. Her entire life for this moment, and a split second decision changed it all. "You don't have to know how. You just have to trust that it will." She pressed a kiss to his forehead and left him alone to wait for his companion.

-----

In six months, they'd both acquired a lot of stuff, those day to day things that turned up in medieval life. So, John found himself, that first night back, trying to figure out what to do with his set of wooden plates, his pewter cup, or the five sets of clothing made from all natural fibers with no buttons or elastic. If all else failed, on his next trip to Earth, he'd make a Sunday visit to the gym at his alma mater. There was always one or two Scadians hanging out, in full armor, and none of them would turn down free equipment.

"I know what you're thinking."

John dropped the cup on his foot and muttered a curse in Arabic. "Aren't you dead yet?"

"You've only been gone three hours. I'm not even insane yet." His evil twin was leaning in the doorway to the bathroom and, while he was still alive, he was looking decidedly green. "Did you have a nice vacation?"

"If you call getting my ass handing to me every three months by a creature composed of the fear of a nearly-Ascended population a vacation, then yeah, I guess." According to Carson, both he and Rodney were in better condition than when they left. Their blood pressure and cholesterol had improved and they'd gotten a much needed chance to catch up on almost two years of lost sleep. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

"I was throwing up in your bathroom." John walked, somewhat unsteadily, and took a seat at the desk. "I'm assuming you've reclaimed our favorite astrophysicist and I should keep my shaky hands to myself?"

"I'd appreciate it." John, for the time being, shoved the clothing into the bottom drawer of his dresser.

"For once in our life, don't be a dick. Don't run away." John rested his chin on the back of the desk chair. "Bad days are coming. Rodney may think of himself as Oppenheimer but Carson is well on his way to being Doctor Moreau."

John grabbed a disposable razor and ducked into the bathroom. "Come on, Carson? The man's worst crime, to date, is not keeping his experimental drugs out of reach."

"You just go on thinking that." The elder John rubbed at his wrist, wishing the ache would just go away. Topamax for the spasms, hydrocodone for the pain and his hand was still convinced it was about a day older than the rest of him. Not a big deal, normally. When he was younger, it had just meant poor circulation. Now, days from death, it was a big deal. "I'd like you to take Rodney off your team, at least until I'm dead. There are parts of the city I'd like to show him, useful things."

"I'm not his keeper." John considered the beard, then his razor, and sighed. This was going to hurt. "Actually, I am, now that I think about it – but that doesn't mean he listens to me. You'll have to ask him yourself, but I don't think he's gonna go for it."

"I'll convince him. Somehow." He needed to keep Rodney here in the city, and he'd find a way, no matter what.

-----

Someone was throwing up. Lorne cautiously opened the door to the stall. "Colonel?" No, it wasn't the Colonel. "Doctor Sheppard? Should I call Beckett?"

"M'okay, mostly." And if Nick believed that, John had a bridge in Brooklyn that he was trying to sell. "Give me a hand, would you? I need to get some meds."

"Sure." He pulled John to his feet. The rumor mill had gone crazy. Another dying time-traveler was in their midst. He'd given Miko tea, done something to the water system so they had virtually unlimited hot water, and his constant companion was a red-hot blond hologram that was in love with Doctor Z. "Sir-"

"I'm a civilian, Nick. You should call me John." He had to lean more than a little on Nick as they walked towards the transporter.

"John, then. Why did you select me for this mission?"

"You're a good soldier."

"That's not why." He'd been a good soldier on Earth, but it hadn't given him a gate team of his own, let alone the 2IC position. That had been Carter's, or Jackson's, depending on the General's mood that week. "When you told me that my team was going to have a botanist as our scientist, you knew I'd pick David Parrish."

"I wasn't sure." Nick's record was squeaky clean, but he wasn't a rising star, despite his capabilities. John suspected that had been O'Neill's doing, to protect him.

"He says thank you for the fish, sir." They stepped into the transporter, and then, after a brief moment of time in which they existed only as particles they were standing near the infirmary.

"Tell him he's welcome." John's legs gave out just outside the door.

-----

"We'll increase the Baclofen, and I'll give you something stronger for the pain." Oxycontin, maybe. John wouldn't live long enough to get addicted, and Carson was willing, at this point, to let John die however he wanted.

It hurt to breath. "Ananke, how much longer?"

"Perhaps two days, if you stay in bed. Approximately 30 years if you were to interface with Atlantis." Ananke had appeared just as they were getting John into a bed, and had proceeded to scare the hell out of the nursing staff. "This is foolish, John. Rejoin with us, and we can save you."

It only took Carson a minute to realize what the hologram was implying. "For Christ'sake, John, why didn't ye tell me this a week ago? We-"

"We do that, and the city will never accept your Sheppard." John gave Ananke a look that could kill, then swallowed his pills dry. "I came here to save the only things that matter, Carson. This isn't my world. I don't want to live here."

"You can't mean that. This is your life-"

"No, it's his life. I have a right to die, Carson. Besides," John took Ananke's hand and his next comment seemed to be directed to her as well. "What would the universe do with two John Sheppards?"

"I..." Carson was a geneticist because it gave him a chance to affect medicine on an epic scale. He'd never been so great with the face-to-face interactions with his patients. "I'll abide by your wishes, John."

"Good, because I need to be able to trust you. I want to be cremated." John patted the hologram's hand as he said it. "We scattered Rodney's ashes in the park by our apartment. I know that was in an alternate time line, but that's still where I'd like to be laid to rest. I love Atlantis, Carson, and she loves me, in her own way, but scatter my ashes in Ueno Park."

"Of course, John." Wherever Ueno Park was, Carson would make sure that was where John ended up.

"Thank you. And now," John got shakily to his feet. "For my great escape."

-----

There was no answer when she knocked, but the door slid open and Elizabeth could see into Doctor Sheppard's darkened room. The AI was in bed with John, curled right up next to him. Elizabeth had seen a lot of strange things over the past two years, but this took the cake. "Ananke?"

"Please, keep your voice down. He is asleep." She slid from his arms and out of bed and joined Elizabeth in the hallway. "What can I do for you, Doctor Weir?"

"I came to talk to John, but I'd really like to know what I just saw in there." Elizabeth knew John considered himself incapable of close personal relationships, but this was crazy.

"John Sheppard is this city's last son. We do not want him to die. Watching him in pain is difficult for us. He sleeps better with someone beside him." Ananke looked at the door and it slid shut. "We love him, but the love for him is simpler than mine for Radek. I do not feel compelled to terminate when he dies."

"You want to stay?" The AI was a testament to Radek's work, but she was lovesick and seemed to upset the Czech. Elizabeth wasn't sure she had the right to ask him to work with the hologram on a day-to-day basis.

"If you'll allow it. The city, once she can see non-ATA personnel, is more responsive and welcoming to them. I also function as a search engine and translator for the Alterran database." Ananke dangled the offer of translations, knowing there was no way Elizabeth could refuse her. "I would be willing to undergo a programming overhaul if you truly believe my presence will hurt Radek. That's the last thing I want to do."

John was always bringing home strays. Elizabeth supposed this was no different. "Of course you can stay."

"Thank you, Elizabeth." Ananke gave her a smile, the smile Elizabeth heard Radek mumur about in Czech, his dead wife's smile, then walked back into the room, the door sliding shut behind her. "Are you awake, John?"

"I'm awake."

He was curled in fetal position, his eyes tightly shut. She lay down beside him again. "You shouldn't be. Tomorrow is..."

"Tomorrow is the day we lose you." John looped his arms behind her neck and let his head rest on her chest. "Ananke. You know I love Atlantis, that I'd do anything for you. You know that, right?"

"Of course, John." The city had seen far too many of the humans die under her watch, but watching John slip away was the hardest. "You came back to us and joined with us, even at great risk to yourself. What's happening to you is our fault."

"And what happened to you was mine. You died because we left you. We tried to forget you and move on with our life. I can't be responsible for your destruction again. "

"You won't." Ananke, and by extension the City, knew John loved them the most.

"Then you understand why I have to do this." And then John unclasped the necklace that she wore her power crystal on, cutting off her recharge cycle.

"John-" She started to flicker almost immediately and pulled away from him. "What have you done?"

"What I have to." John slid the crystal into his pocket. "I love you, but I can be happy without you. You can't live without me."

He'd already lost his mind and no one had noticed. The degeneration was farther along than she'd thought. "John, you have already stopped it! We will not die. You will not have to watch us sink. There's no more you can do!"

"There is. I can stop Rodney from walking through that wormhole." He gave her a peck on the cheek right before she lost cohesion. "No matter what the cost."

-----

John opened the door to find himself standing there, holding two mugs of coffee. "Sorta risky, isn't it? Spending the night, I mean?"

"The Daedalus isn't due in for an hour, and my second-in-command is sleeping with a male botanist. Give me a little credit."

John knew why the other man was here. "We're leaving in ten minutes. They have a ZPM. You're not going to be able to convince him to stay."

"I can try." His evil twin gave him a mug. "I'll call if I convince him to stay."

"If you convince Rodney to stay here while there's a ZPM just waiting for him on P4M-327, you deserve Elizabeth's diplomacy degree." John took a long drag of coffee and made a contented noise. "But this will go a long way."

"Shoo. At least give me a chance." He pushed his younger self out the door and sat down on the bed. He heard the shower cut off.

"If Ronon makes another comment about my smell, I'll... What are you doing here?" Rodney stopped in his tracks, naked except for the towel he was using to dry his hair. "You are not the John I'm looking for."

"Stay with me. Just for today." John's hands shook a little, but he didn't let the cup drop. "Tomorrow I'll be dead, and you and him can live happily ever after. Or if not happily, then at least you'll have a better after than the one we had. Just don't go. Please."

Rodney took the cup from John's hands and set it down on the desk. He didn't bother to put on a towel, he just wrapped his arms around the other man. He could feel the tremors that Carson said would accompany brain death. "I can't."

"I promise you, Rodney, they'll bring back the ZPM. With or without you." He could smell Rodney's shampoo and inhaled deeply.

"Not that. I can't watch you die." He'd seen John do so many stupid things, so many things that should have killed him, but to watch him die like this? To watch him die in inches, as his brain atrophied and his organs failed? Rodney couldn't do it. He was still too much of a coward. He wiped the tears off John's face. "Did you love me?"

"Enough to do this for you." John reached one arm back and picked up the cup and pushed it into Rodney's hands.

Rodney drank half the mug at the first sip. "Ten years, and you still don't know I take my coffee black?" He knew this was no time for humor, but he couldn't help it. God, he was horrible with death.

"Oh, I remembered. I had to use the sugar to cover up the citric acid." John's face had gone blank, but he was still holding on.

"Citric... You put citrus in my coffee?" Rodney let the cup fall from his fingers. He wouldn't be dramatic like Radek and throw it at the wall. "Why?" He must have used a lot. His throat was already starting to close up.

John took Rodney's ear piece out and crushed it under his heel. "I love you, Rodney. As much as I love flying. I love you more than my commission, more than the ships I designed in Tokyo. I love you enough to tear down the walls of time, but I don't love you enough to kill Atlantis. I'd rather give up the life we had together than see her sink into the ocean again. I can't let you go to P4M-327." John stepped back and Rodney sank to the floor in a controlled sort of fall. He knelt down beside Rodney, pressed something into his hand, and walked away.

Once he'd gotten far enough away, he called John and told him that Rodney wasn't going on today's mission. His younger self trusted him with Rodney. His younger self was a fool.

End of Part Three


	4. Nothing you say that can salvage the lie

What Happened

"Intimacy, Knowledge and Nourishment. These are the three appetites that all beings have, and must satisfy." Their native guide, Garun, gestured to the three copper statues. All were feminine, and all conformed to the Hashtok womanly ideal of a plump woman, each of them holding the implement of their respective appetite. "In order to enter our temple and retrieve the power cell, you must appease one of the three appetites."

"Do we get to pick?" John gave Ronon and Teyla a nervous look. Of all the times for aliens to make him have sex with someone... This was what he got for not taking Rodney along.

"Chance decides." Garun opened a large chest and took out three smaller boxes. He presented them to Ronon. "You were first through the doorway. You must choose, and satisfy its nature. Perhaps we will have a grand meal, or share new ideas. Or perhaps we'll have some entertainment of a different sort."

Ronon couldn't personally think of anything bad in those choices and picked a box at random, opening the one on the left. "It's..." He smiled. "It's a whisk."

Phew. For once, just this once, it looked like no one was going to have to take one for the team. "I don't suppose you can cook?" Teyla couldn't, and John could microwave with the best of them, but cooking for a force of nature was a little beyond his abilities.

"I can cook." Ronon took the tool out of the box and tested its construction on the palm of his hand. "Good tools."

"I will show you to the ceremonial kitchen." Garun gestured towards a doorway. "Colonel Sheppard and Teyla Emmagen. You should contact your leaders and invite them for this meal. I have faith your companion will do great service to the idea of Nourishment."

"I'll give Elizabeth a call." Ronon looked... happy. The man liked to cook. How did John not know that? "Have fun, Ronon."

Ronon saluted with the whisk and followed Garun into the kitchen.

"That was most fortunate." Teyla considered the other two boxes. "Which would you have chosen?"

"Middle, I suppose." He hadn't really thought about it.

Teyla slid the lid off the box and took out a vial. "I do not believe this would facilitate knowledge." She sniffed it. "Sandalwood."

What Could Have Happened

"All of you cannot come into the antechamber. It is forbidden." Garun gave their guns a nervous glance.

"Religious law?" John had heard stranger things but their guide was a secular government official of a race who didn't seem to put much stock in gods, just the nature of the universe.

"Fire regulations." Garun spread his hands in a 'what can I do' gesture. "Someone will have to remain outside until the chosen goes to complete their task."

"I will remain outside." Teyla would more than appreciate the break from her teammates. Things had been out of balance since John's return from the Sanctuary. John's relations to all of them had become strained. While he knew in his mind that they hadn't abandoned him, Teyla was sure his heart didn't yet believe it.

"Make sure no one busts in here." John slung his pack over one shoulder. "Lead on."

Garun swung open the doors to their grand temple and lead them into the antechamber with pride. "Intimacy, Knowledge and Nourishment. These are the three appetites, that all beings have and must satisfy." He pointed to each of the three statues in turn. "In order to enter our temple and retrieve the power cell, you must appease one of the three appetites."

"Do we get to pick?" John gave Rodney a nervous look. It wouldn't be the first time they'd had to perform sex acts in public, but it would be the first time since he'd... since he'd what? Broken Rodney's heart? That was too dramatic for men like them. John still wasn't sure what he'd ended six months ago in Rodney's apartment, since they didn't talk about it. Ever.

"Chance decides." Garun opened a large chest and took out three smaller boxes. He presented them to John. "You were first through the doorway. You must choose, and satisfy nature. Perhaps we will have a grand meal, or share new ideas. Or perhaps we'll have some entertainment of a different sort."

John reached for the middle box without consulting either of his teammates. He opened it quickly, like tearing off a band-aid. There was a vial inside, filled with a clear liquid. "I don't suppose this is cooking oil?"

Garun shook his head, a huge grin on his face. "No, no it is not."

John twisted off the cap and took a whiff. He let his gaze meet Rodney's. "Sandalwood."

"Ah, then you've already chosen." Their guide threw one arm around each of them. "Come. You must make ready. Sunset is only an hour and a half away."

"Wait a second! Don't I get any say in this?" Rodney dug his heels into the clay floor. "I am not taking another one for the team!"

"I will." Rodney wasn't sure, but he thought Ronon was smiling. He was definitely looking at John with an appraising eye.

"Never mind." Rodney sighed. "Let's go." Sex with John was sex with John, even in front of an audience of aliens. Who knew when he'd get another chance like this? He also wasn't sure that he could watch Ronon take what Rodney still thought of as his place under John, the way the Satedan had so effortlessly taken Ford's place on the team.

Garun showed them into middle door of the three leading out of the room, the door that lead to the medical center and then he returned, still all smiles and clapped Ronon on the back. "This, my new friend, is a time of great celebration. No one has chosen the middle box in many years." He whispered conspirationally "Too embarrassing."

"It'll be good for them." It just wasn't right, two people wanting each other as much as his taskmaster and Rodney did, and not doing anything about it. On Sateda, a matchmaker who specialized in pairing the blind would have been called in. She would have sat them down months ago and explained in very simple words why celibacy was counter productive and given them pamphlets about the established protocols that same-sex couples had to follow so they fulfilled their genetic obligation to the survival of the species before changing their housing assignments.

"Your leaders should be here for this joyous event. Please extend the warm hospitality of the Hashtok to them." He bowed, deeply, and Ronon mimicked the gesture. "But please do not reveal which appetite is to be appeased. The anticipation is a large part of the ritual."

"Of course." Ronon bowed to their guide once more and then went back outside to where Teyla was waiting. "Sheppard and McKay have to perform in some sort of public ritual. They want us to bring in our leaders."

Teyla checked her watch. "The Daedalus will have arrived. Perhaps Doctor Weir can persuade Colonel Caldwell to join us."

They'd had to spend most of the hour and a half till sunset in the Hashtok's medical center, where they'd been poked, prodded and tested with a thoroughness that would have made Carson proud. There were only a few minutes to spare.

"Are there cameras?" John looked at the smooth gray walls and couldn't see any, which was odd, since aliens that were into ritual sex usually liked to watch.

"You will be observed, yes." Garun turned down the sheets on the large bed that was the sole feature of the room. "Please remember, we are giving you a prized artifact of a forgotten past."

"You can trust us to put on a good show." John threw an arm around Rodney, and the other man didn't push him away so John took that as a good sign.

"Excellent. When the gong is rung, you will appease Intimacy in whatever manner you see fit." Garun bowed, that grin still on his face and left them.

John let his arm drop from Rodney's shoulders and sat on the edge of the bed. "Nice sheets, at least."

"Maybe we can trade for them." Rodney sat beside him and stared at the wall. "Nice people, the Hashtok. If we asked, they'd probably give us a knife to cut the tension."

"What do you want me to say?" John followed Rodney's lead and picked a speck on the wall to stare at. "Do you want to hear how much it sucks to know that our salvation from the Wraith meant I had to give you up? Do you want to hear how many times I dreamed about you in the Sanctuary? Is that it, Rodney? If that's what you want to hear, I'll tell you."

"Don't." Rodney reached over blindly and took John's hand. "I get it. Genius, remember? Your choosing Atlantis over me, not a big surprise. We weren't... You didn't go away. You're still my friend, probably my best friend, if I was going to quantify it. It's fine."

John stroked his thumb over the top of Rodney's hand and forced himself to look away from the wall, forced himself to look at Rodney. "You should have let Ronon do this. It would have been easier on both of us."

"Not a chance." Rodney fell backwards, taking John with him so they were lying side by side, knees hung over the edge of the bed. "I can't remember how many times I fell asleep in your bed because I was too tired to go back to my room. Actually, I can, but the number's not important except that it's a bigger one than the number of times I fell asleep because you made me too tired to walk back to my room. We weren't just using each other for sex."

"I thought we weren't going to talk about this." John was an emotional cripple, and he knew it. The last person he'd trusted with his heart had ripped it into tiny pieces and some days, he was even grateful she had. He never would have gone into the Air Force if Natasha hadn't shocked him out of academic complacency.

"If we're going to have sex in front of god knows how many aliens, I just thought it would be a good idea to air some of the dirty laundry. Tell me I wasn't just a convenient body and I'll let it go."

In the distance, John heard the clang of a gong. "Time to put on a show." He sat up and stripped off his shirt. "For the record, you weren't all that convenient."

"For the record, you fell asleep in the middle of sex three times." Rodney stopped John from unbuttoning his pants. "Lay back, Colonel, and trust me. I promise not to blow up any solar systems."

John leaned back and pillowed his head on his arms. "We really need to talk after this." Rodney may not have been the best lover he'd ever had, but he was the only one John had ever been desperate to keep around following the inevitable implosion that ended all his relationships. John loved Atlantis, but he needed Rodney in a way he tried not to think about.

"Stop thinking." Rodney got the last button undone and pushed John's pants down. "The nice aliens are making us have sex, an excuse that falls within the SGC parameters for excusing homosexual acts. So let's get to the sex part already."

The gong banged again, and Elizabeth opened her eyes. They were done, apparently, and sleeping. The arena full of aliens were milling around like people did during intermission and Elizabeth steadied herself and tried to listen to Ambassador Garun.

"The enclosure in the center of the arena is made of a special one way glass. We can see and hear them, but they cannot see us."

"They didn't know we were watching?" Elizabeth was probably going to see that little display for weeks in her dreams, which was bad enough. Worse that John and Rodney hadn't know they were being watched. What she'd witness should have been private.

"They knew they were being observed, but I did not inform them about the arena or that you and your Colonel friend would be here. We did not wish to intimidate them." Garun noticed how red Doctor Weir's skin had become. "Are you ill?"

"Not in a way that your doctors can help." Elizabeth noticed Colonel Caldwell heading in their direction. He didn't look happy. "Stephen, this is Ambassador-" He walked right past them, not even sparing a glance in her direction. "This is going to be an interesting debriefing."

The Hashtok had let them sleep for an hour, then woken them up and handed the ZPM over to Rodney. "Is it weird that this is just slightly more thrilling than getting you naked?"

Rodney was carrying the ZPM cradled in his arms like it was a baby, and John wouldn't have been surprised if he'd started cooing at it. "This is Pegasus." John had given up quantifying the weirdness in this galaxy. "What do you think Atlantis will do with two ZPMs hooked up?"

"I have no idea. But it's going to be something to see." Rodney stroked the ZPM and got a far away look in his eyes. "I'm going to light her up. It's going to be beautiful, John. Our favorite girl is finally going to really wake up."

"If we get Radek to do the installation, we could watch from one of the jumpers." John opened the door that led out of the tunnel and into the antechamber. "I think... Colonel Caldwell." That warm feeling he'd been riding turned ice cold.

"I'll expect your resignation tomorrow morning." With that one sentence, Stephen Caldwell pulled the rug out from beneath John. "The Daedalus will be in Atlantis for three days, then we'll head back to Earth. You'll be with us, or you'll be brought up on charges."

He left them standing there and headed outside the temple. John was frozen in place, mouth open, and Rodney raced after Caldwell. "You can't do that. I know the SGC rules on this. Any sexual acts performed to save your life or in the pursuit of necessary technology do not fall under the code of military conduct."

"I could care less about that little display, although I'm sure your colleagues will enjoy the video the Hashtok so thoughtfully shot." Caldwell tossed a DVD at Rodney, who fumbled it but managed not to drop it. "Screwing your comrades in the line of duty to get a ZPM is covered under the SGC corollaries. Doing it off duty on top of fraternizing with someone under you in the chain of command isn't. The arena has excellent acoustics. We heard every word the two of you said to each other."

Rodney broke the DVD in half. "If you think this will get you Atlantis, you're wrong. Elizabeth will never allow it. She'll fight to keep John here."

"Doctor Weir used most of her favors up keeping the Colonel in this galaxy last year. She won't be able to do it again." Caldwell took another copy of the DVD from his jacket and threw it at Rodney. "He's coming with me in three days, Doctor McKay. He doesn't belong here. He never has."

When Caldwell left, Rodney threw both copies at the stone door and watched them break into small pieces. He felt a little bit better. Not much, but a little bit. He took a minute to stomp on the shards then went back to find John.

Exile

The room they'd given him on the Daedalus felt like a prison, or a tomb. John threw his duffel bag into the tiny closet and sat on the floor by the foot of the bed. This was it, this was the end. The reprieve Elizabeth had given him two years ago was up. No more flying, no more Air Force. Everything he'd been for the past ten years was gone with the bang of a gong.

He opened up his laptop, pulled up Media Player and hit play. Then he rested his head against the bed frame and listened to Johnny Cash sing about Folsum Prison Blues.

Exile + 18 Days

John waited until the crowds had died down before he let Hermiod beam him down to the Disembarkation Area. He had a brilliant, Rodney-esque plan to slink out of the mountain without talking to anyone, but based on recent events, John should have known he wasn't that lucky.

"Colonel Sheppard. I'd say welcome back, but you'd probably punch me."

"Doctor Jackson." John should have been expecting this. "I'd say that's about right." After two years in Atlantis, everything about Earth felt off. The air, the lights, the smell, it was all wrong. It suddenly struck John that he'd only ever really felt at home here in the air. He stared at Jackson, who'd managed not to give up his books and still became a soldier. "Can we talk?"

They ended up in John's hotel room, drinking good beer and trading stories. Daniel rolled the bottle between his fingers. "He gave you a book?"

"He did." John pulled the battered pamphlet from his jacket and thumbed through it, seeing his handwriting, black penned words of disbelief. "I'm not asking, but you could tell me anyway."

"Jack was too influential, too dangerous. If they'd done this to him, we would have lost the Asgard, the Jaffa and maybe even the Tok'ra. But that war is over and Thor's influence could keep Jack in power, but it couldn't keep him with me." Daniel took a long drag from his beer bottle, finishing the last swallow. He set it beside the other empties on the table and stood.

"Thank you for talking to me." At least now John knew his mistake. Now, at least he knew that when you had an affair with a member of your team, you really needed to find a super-powerful ally first.

"For what it's worth, I'm really sorry." Daniel shook John's hand and he really did seem sorry. "I'll have the concierge call me a cab. Neither of us should be driving." As he was leaving, he hesitated at the doorway. "John, you need to get away from here. You know too much and there are too many people here with the power to just make you disappear."

"I know." After Jackson left, John cranked up Mr. Cash and had another beer. He stared out the window into the night for a long time, then he slipped the blank bands off his wrists. He'd worn them for ten years, to remind himself Natasha had killed that man when she'd left him. "Not so dead after all." There was only one place left to go. The writing was still on the wall, no matter how much paint he'd put on it.

Exile + 20 Days

Troy looked the same as it had a decade ago, gritty and cold. The apartment building he'd lived in was still there, a little older, a little more run down, the beautiful stained glass windows replaced with plexi. John didn't go inside and he didn't go up the hill to RPI either. Instead, he took a walk up First Street and went looking for ghosts of his past. He found himself in the remains of Sage Park. Where there had once been a large open grass area there was now a student union. He sat down on a bench. "What am I even doing here?"

"I'm not sure, Mister Sheppard. What are you doing here?"

John turned and looked at where the voice had come from. On the next bench over sat an Asian man, reading the newspaper. "How did you know my name?"

"Dr. Kusanagi sent us a letter. My name is Cho." The man folded his newspaper and joined John on his bench. "I've done a little research on you. Ten years ago, you were one of the most promising aeronautical engineers of your generation. Two weeks from defense of your doctoral dissertation and with a job offers from several defense firms, not to mention NASA, you walked away. You drove to a recruiting office and enlisted. They sent you to Officer training and you flew supersonic planes instead of designing them."

"Who exactly are you, Cho?" John hadn't told anyone any of that. To his friends, Johnny had just disappeared one day. He'd never contacted any of them and he'd never gone to a reunion.

"I work for the Japanese Space Agency, Mister Sheppard, and I have come to make you an offer you shouldn't refuse."

Exile + 97 Days

"No, no, you're not listening to me! John Sheppard! John. The man is a pilot, there is no reason for him to be-"

(Please, shut up!) The man who'd driven Rodney in from the embassy stopped the car. When Rodney said nothing, the man sighed and got out of the car. He opened the passenger door and let Rodney out. "Engineering Building. His office is on the second floor."

"I'm telling you, the Embassy gave us the wrong address. He's not here. Hey, hey!" The man had gotten back into the car and was speeding away. "Wonderful. Just wonderful." Abandoned in a foreign city by a surly cab driver at... at a university. Well, at least there was one bright spot. Anyone teaching here named John Sheppard probably spoke English.

He walked up the stairs and found an office with a plate written in both English and kanji. He ran his fingers across it and imagined, just for a moment, that he'd slipped into an alternate reality where the man he'd known the past two years could actually be, 'Doctor John Sheppard, PhD.'

Rodney was about to knock when a voice began to speak. (What day is it? That's right, it's Monday. No, it's too late.) Even though he barely understood a word, the tone and voice were familiar. The tone was the one he berated his staff with and the voice... the voice was John's. He pushed open the door and there his objective was, talking on the phone. (Midnight, and not a minute later. Do you under-) When John saw him, he stopped in mid sentence and hung up on who ever he was talking to. They just stared at each other for a moment and then John spoke. "Lock the door."

"Your desk is really big." From his position sprawled across it, Rodney had to marvel that two grown men fit on top of it. "Sturdy construction, quality wood. And the frosted glass in the door is-"

"Shut up about the decor, Rodney." John sat up and slid off the edge of the desk to find his boxers. "I thought you were a really vivid fantasy, but only the real Rodney would babble about how wonderfully convenient it is to fuck in my office."

"Nice to see you too, John." Rodney sat up. "Toss me my pants, would you?" John flung Rodney's briefs over one shoulder and they hit him in the face. "Wonderful shot, and by the way, what are you doing here?"

"Teaching." John finally found his boxers and slid them on. "The real question is, what are you doing here? I thought the City would sink into the ocean if you took a vacation."

"I'm not on vacation. What do you mean, teaching?" Rodney caught the t-shirt flung at him and pulled it on over his head. "And why does that sign out there say you're a PhD?"

"I am a PhD and I'm teaching young engineers how to design non-military spacecraft. We're going to Mars." John found a pair of pants next and checked the size. His. He stood and stepped into them. "You didn't come all this way just to screw around on my desk, although it was a very nice bonus."

"I'm here for two reasons. One is to tell you Colonel Caldwell has been relieved of command." Rodney could see the moment that sunk in. John went rigid like a board. "He'd been compromised by the Goa'uld."

"Who's in charge back home?" John ran the waistband of Rodney's pants through his fingers.

"Lorne, until they can find someone willing to take the job. Actually, if is a better word. He'll probably get stuck with it. No one's exactly eager to take the job. Word is, the command position is cursed. I can't imagine why they'd think that. We've only gone through four military leaders in two years."

John half-heartedly tossed Rodney his pants then sat back down on the desk beside him. "They're going to make the same decision we made."

"Who?"

"Lorne and Parrish. They'll stop whatever it is they were doing," And John honestly didn't know, because he hadn't asked and Lorne hadn't told, "So Lorne can keep command." John rested his head on Rodney's shoulder. "I take it you're here until the Daedalus makes her next trip?"

"Actually, that's the second thing." Rodney rested his hand on top of John's head and said in what he hoped was a calm voice, "I quit the project."

"You what?" John sat up and grabbed Rodney by the shoulders. "Are you insane? Atlantis needs you!"

"No, Atlantis needs you!" They were shouting, and it felt good, it felt real, unlike the hour before which had been surreal and like a really good porno. "I need you."

"Don't get sentimental on me, Rodney." John shook him a couple times, just to get his message through. "How many times have you saved Atlantis?"

"Please don't shake the physicist. And if you have to know, three times. And how many times have you saved me, John?" Rodney pushed John away. "Three weeks ago, Radek was on a puddle jumper that crashed into the ocean. He'd asked me to take his place, but I was in a lousy mood so I said no. If I had gone, who would have rescued me? No one but you could have convinced him and you're in Japan, doing god knows what!"

"I told you, I'm teaching! Stop evading the issue. You have to go back. Do you honestly think Zelenka can run the City? He doesn't even have the ATA gene."

"I'm a physicist, not a soldier. Without you, that place was going to kill me, no matter how much I loved her, so I left. Let Zelenka keep Atlantis in one piece." Rodney folder his arms across his chest, and did his best impression of a five year old digging his heels into the dirt. "I'm not going back. Not without you."

"You're going to kill her!"

"I'd rather kill her than lose you." Rodney looked as angry as John had ever seen him. "Atlantis is a thing, John. She's a marvelous, wonderful thing and I love her, but I love you more. Atlantis can never love me back, but if I stick around long enough, maybe you can. "

For a long time, they just sat there, on John's desk, not talking and then, John spoke. "You can stay." Rodney was the only person in his life that had ever followed when he'd been sent away. "But next week, when you're on the phone with Daniel Jackson, begging to be let back into the program, I reserve the right to say I told you so."

"You reserve whatever you want, I'm not going anywhere." He put an arm around John's shoulder. "So..."

"So, don't worry about being bored." John threw his arm over Rodney's and they just sat there and stared out John's office window over looking Tokyo. The idea that Rodney would come follow him, all the way form Japan, leave the program and Atlantis, just to be with him... John couldn't wrap his mind around it. "I'm not happy you're here, but I'm glad you're with me."

"It's where I belong."

Exile + 383 Days (1.04 years)

"Rodney, it's 6 am."

"I know." Rodney stared at the schematic on his screen and knew that if he just looked at it long enough, it would make sense. It would all come together. He was one of the most brilliant physicists of his generation and he had the some of best minds in Japan working for him. They could build a ZPM, he knew it.

"You haven't been to bed. You're teaching class in three hours." John hit save, then closed the lid, ignoring Rodney's protests. "There's a naqueda reactor in your lab, Rodney. You're going to blow up something if you don't get some sleep."

"I haven't blown up a..." Rodney's eyes went wide and he snapped his fingers. "That's it! That's absolutely it!" He kissed John, for long enough that John had forgotten what he was trying to do, then sat back down and opened his laptop back up. "Well? What are you still doing here? Don't tell me you don't have things to do. The only reason you're ever up this early is to go running in the park."

"I..." John shook his head, trying to figure out what had just happened. If Rodney didn't want to come back to bed for a few hours, then John would go running. "Don't blow up anything on accident, okay?"

"Yes, fine. Purposeful explosions only." Rodney was completely engrossed again and John just laughed a little and went for his run.

Exile + 738 Days (2.02 years)

"The blue things on the walls are wiggling."

"I know, John." They were getting older and that fact became blatantly obvious when a little thing like a roller blading accident sent them to the emergency room.

"They're so pretty."

"I'm sure they are." Rodney turned to the doctor that had set John's leg. "What the hell did you give him? This man has to go before the Appropriations Committee in twelve hours! Do you people want to go to Mars or not?"

Exile + 1227 Days (3.36 years)

"Alright, everybody clear out. We're powering her up." John waited until the last of his doctoral engineering students had ducked behind the protective shield, then he fired the engines. There was that steady hum that he'd missed so much and John slid his hand across the controls. The small craft lifted up off the ground and through the intercom, he could hear cheering. "Ladies and gentlemen... We have liftoff."

Exile + 1742 Days (4.7 years)

"It's green."

"When we treated the diamond shell, it turned green, every time." Rodney picked up the diamond hull of the ZPM. "Either the charging process turns it orange, or the Alterrans made them that way for some aesthetic reasons."

"Those wacky Ancients." John stretched out an arm and pulled Rodney to him. "It's really going to happen. You're going to make me a ZPM, and then we're going to Mars." They kissed, the ZPM clutched between them, until John heard someone clear their throat. "I think they're ready."

Rodney looked back and saw one of his assistants carrying the lead case their naqueda was in. "What, you've never seen your boss make out with his boyfriend before? Come on, people, this is it! Do you want a safe, energy efficient power source and a space colony, or to do you want to stare at me all day?"

Exile + 1743 Days (4.7 years)

"It's not turning orange." John propped his chin on his hand and watched the interior of the shell glow green as the naqueda became naquidaria and then something else they hadn't named yet that would charge the ZPM.

"I know. I'm tempted to go at with a spray can when it's finished charging."

Exile + 2533 Days (6.94 years)

"I'm not sure I can do this." John watched his hands tremble. "Jesus Christ, Rodney, what were we thinking?"

"I don't know. Wasn't this your idea?"

"No, this was so your idea!" John balled his hands into fists to make them stop shaking. "It just... feels off. Like something's missing."

Rodney was pacing back and forth, wearing a rut in the carpet. "We could just not go. We're in Canada for three weeks. We could throw out our plans and just go to Niagara Falls. We could even visit Jeanie."

"Sounds good to-" There was a loud knock on the door. "Hold that thought, Rodney." John opened the door, stared at the people standing there, shut it and opened it again. "Rodney, come'er."

"What?" Rodney came to the door and looked at their visitors. He blinked, like he wasn't sure he believed what he was seeing. "Teyla, Ronon."

Their former teammates were standing in the doorway, wearing jeans and t-shirts, looking so Earth-human that John thought he was hallucinating. "What... How did the two of you get here?"

"We flew." Ronon pushed past them into the hotel room. "Your people are insane, Sheppard. They wouldn't give us travel papers."

"Doctor Wier went before the International Committee to gain us travel rights." Teyla slid a EU passport from her back pocket and showed them. "Are you alright?" John and Rodney were just staring at her.

John stepped aside to let her come in. "Not that we're not happy to see you both, but, what the hell are you doing here?"

"We wanted to see your world." Teyla had on her diplomatic smile.

"Weir told us to take a vacation or she would put our teams on standby and make us go farm with the Athosians." Ronon spread out across the couch in the living room area of their suite. "I hate farming."

"Must be some vacation, three weeks on the Daedalus both ways." John didn't exactly have fond memories of the last trip he'd made on her.

"We've missed you." If Teyla had been a little less tactful, that sentence would have ended with, 'you idiots,' but she restrained herself and sat down beside Ronon.

"Wait, back up. Teams, plural?" Rodney didn't like it when reality spun out of his control. "What exactly are the two of you doing out there?"

"They promoted us." Ronon said the word 'promoted' like it was distasteful. "They've got her peddling sweets and they put me as head of a team."

"I am not peddling sweets, I am leading trade negotiations. There is no chocolate in our galaxy." It sounded like they'd had this discussion often. "And do not deny you enjoy leading the strike team. I have seen you in the armory, talking to the equipment."

"Some of the ancestor's equipment is alive. If you don't interact with them, they get fussy." Ronon crossed his arms. He refused to argue about this any more, it had gotten old a long time ago. "Sheppard, you okay?"

"I'm..." John blinked a few times, then decided to go with it. "I'm fine. Glad to see you, is all."

"He's lying through his teeth. What are you two really doing here? You can't tell me Elizabeth gave you two months off just to come see us." Elizabeth had fought with him when he'd left, but it had finally sunk in for Rodney that if the City was still standing, then maybe he hadn't been that essential after all. Valuable, yes, but not essential.

"We come bearing a message from Elizabeth." Teyla suddenly turned serious. "Atlantis has been granted colonial status. In two years time, we will be an independent nation tied to Earth via membership in the European Union. Our military policies will be brought into alignment with theirs. Elizabeth asks..." Teyla hesitated, then corrected herself. "No. Elizabeth begs of you both, come home."

End of Part Four


	5. Deprived of my conscience

With Gate Team One off world, Elizabeth decided it was an opportune time to take a five minute vacation with a mounds bar before all hell, as usual, inevitably broke loose. The doors to her quarters slid open and the lights came on. There was a body sprawled across the floor. "Doctor Sheppard? John, answer me!" She knelt beside the man and felt for a pulse. "I know you're not dead, John. Talk to me." No response. "I'm calling Carson."

"No, don't." John blindly grabbed at her, finally settling on a death grip on her forearm. "You have to be the balladeer, carry the message. Tell him I'm sorry. Tell him I had to." The eyes that finally opened were glazed and unfocused. "I never wanted to hurt him. I wanted to save him. I wanted to save her. I need them both, do you understand? I couldn't let him go, it would ruin everything. The life I had with him is the sacrifice for her, the lamb on the altar."

He wasn't making any sense, and she touched the back of her hand to his forehead. Feverish and incoherent. This was the end stage of the disease he'd described to Carson. "It's alright, John. You've done all you could." She let her hand stay on his face, remembering how Ananke had been curled beside him so he could feel something, anything, besides the pain.

"Not everything." His hands tightened, then loosened and he let her go. "You can't trust Caldwell. He'll betray you. He's the one, he's the spy, he's going to ruin everything. The Goau'ld, they've gotten him. One too many beers and bang, snake in the head. Can't trust him, can't let him send me away."

"Of course not." There was a fine line of blood trickling from his nose now. "Please let me call Carson."

"No doctors! Last survivor, like the people in the pods you found. Can't live like that any more. Let me go, please, just let me go. I want it to stop. I want… I want to be back in Tokyo, in the park on a Saturday morning. I want a future where I'll never have that. Can't have them both. Choose this. Love him there, or love her here. Maybe love them both here. That's better. That's better, isn't it?" His eyes suddenly focused in on her. "Tell me the City is more important. Tell me I didn't waste the last few months with him, working on this, instead of living our lives. Tell me."

"It was worth it." She brushed his hair out of his eyes and stroked his face. She could feel him tremble. She'd read the report he'd given Carson about what to expect, about how Rodney had died, screaming. "John, what did you take?"

"I didn't ask. Got it from Carson, before I left. So much I can't tell you, Elizabeth, because I wasn't here. They sent me away, killed the City. You can't let them send me away. You have to separate us, you have to. We're worth more here. Our lives, that life, the one I had with him, it's not worth losing everything. He made me promise him on his death bed, Elizabeth. Don't make me a liar."

"It's alright, John." She found the needle he'd used; it had rolled a few feet away. There were a few ounces of fluid in it. "If you take the rest?"

"I'll go fast." His eyes darted to the needle in her hand. "Everything I told you was a lie. There were a million people on Lantia at last count, even when we lost the City we stayed. There was no enemy, just bad luck and death. Promise me you'll separate us, promise me you'll stop Caldwell."

"I promise. I'm going to take care of everything. We're going to be okay. The City will survive." She could see he wasn't listening. She tapped his shoulder. "Do I need to hit a vein?" He shook his head then let it rest on the floor, like it was too much effort to hold it up any more.

Afterwards, Elizabeth threw the needle into the trash disposal and sat back down beside the body. "I'm pushing Carson to commit what is essentially genocide. I never thought I'd be the kind of person who could do that and still sleep at night." She folded his arms across his chest. "Not that the sleeping is unassisted, but now that I know it works, that we can beat them, maybe I won't need the pills any more. But you have to understand, Doctor Sheppard, I can't break up my flagship team. Not yet. I need John and Rodney out there doing what they do best. But don't worry, I'm going to take care of Caldwell for you." She touched her earpiece. "Weir to the Infirmary. I've just found Doctor Sheppard in my living room. He's dead. I'm going to need a medical team up here."

Doctor Biro's voice came on. "No one down here is going to be sorry to hear that, Elizabeth. Rodney was brought in ten minutes ago in anaphylactic shock. He says Doctor Sheppard tried to kill him."

'I never wanted to hurt him.'

"I'll be right down."

---

What Could Have Happened

"Elizabeth asks..." Teyla hesitated, then corrected herself. "No. Elizabeth begs of you both, come home."

John laughed, and it wasn't a nice sound. He went to the mini-bar and stared into it, as if the answer was inside. "How bad is it?" He tossed two bottles in Ronon and Teyla's general direction.

"The City has rejected us." Ronon caught the bottle and cracked open the seal. "The doors won't open, the lights won't turn on. Unless you have the mark of the Ancestors, she's cold and unresponsive. We talk to her, and most of the time she doesn't listen. Only the gate room warms to us."

"I hate to tell you this, but my ex-girlfriends are never happy to see me." Beer in hand, John sat on the arm of Rodney's chair. "Maybe I don't want to go back."

"Oh, don't be ridiculous." Rodney reached up and stole John's beer. "Of course we're going back. Two years is plenty of time to wrap up our work here, and we can take the best of this batch of post docs with us."

"Can I have some dignity here?" John grabbed his beer back and took a long drag from the bottle. "Of course we're going back, but it would have been nice to let Elizabeth sweat it out for a few months. Seven years in exile with no word, she deserves to stew a little."

They had changed so much. As she opened her own miniature bottle of vodka, Teyla had to wonder if they would be so close if they still had to hide their relationship as they had that first year in Atlantis. "The past seven years have been fraught with conflict, but the Wraith are no longer the threat they once were. It was after we turned back their final major attack that the City became unresponsive. When I tell Elizabeth of-"

"Hold that thought." John looked at Rodney. "Do we actually want to do this? Not the Atlantis this, the why we're in Canada this."

"I suppose that it makes financial and legal sense-"

"Yes or no, Rodney. Do you want to do this or not?" John still wasn't exactly sure how they'd ended up in Ontario with an appointment with a Justice of the Peace, but here they were. "Because if you do, I think we found our witnesses."

Rodney reached up and took John's right hand and rubbed some warmth back into the circulation-poor digits. "You realize this may be the craziest thing we've ever done?"

"This is no crazier than being in a/an X302 without navigation, flying towards a sun." John could tell Rodney was cracking. "No crazier than staying in the City while the storm of the century headed in our direction."

Rodney had done the math a thousand times and the chances of the two of them reaching this age alive and relatively intact had, at one time, been astronomical. Now, unless he blew himself up in the lab or John flew one of his experimental ships into a mountain, their circumstances had changed a lot. With the Wraith gone, or at least partially neutralized, they could go home. He could have that lifetime with John. "Let's do it. Teyla, Ronon, how would you like to go to a wedding?"

"Your people dress as flightless birds for your commitment rituals?" Teyla watched as John attempted, unsuccessfully, for the third time, to get his bow tie done.

"I do not look like a peng-" John actually looked in the mirror. "Yes. Yes we do. And don't ask me why, it's just one of those things."

Teyla hid a smile, then reached into her bag. "When you have finished, I have a 'thing' of my own I wish to share."

"If I didn't know you, I'd worry about that sentence." John finally got the tie knotted and turned around to see what Teyla was up to. She'd taken out a long teak box and from it a bamboo handled brush. "One of your people's rituals?"

"Yes, please sit down." She took out a small bottle of ink from her bag and dipped her brush into it. "When one of my people married an offworlder, it was always tradition to paint the symbols for home on the bottoms of their feet, so that they could always find their way home should they wish." Teyla propped John's feet up on a suitcase and began tracing the first symbol. "I served Atlantis for much longer without you than with you, John, but I wish you to know how important your friendship was to me. The City became my home, just as it became yours. It is her symbols you should wear today."

John tried not to laugh as the brush tickled his feet, and decided this hadn't been such a bad idea after all.

"Nude."

"Nude. Right." Rodney nodded to himself as he did up the buttons on his vest. "That's very Spartan, although I can't imagine winter ceremonies were much fun. Didn't your planet have a winter?"

"A long one. People just got married inside. Not everyone, not by the time I was born." Ronon looked absolutely serious, which made Rodney wonder if he was joking. "My parents were strict adherents to the traditions. They were married wearing nothing but the beads in their hair." Love had been simpler, on Sateda. If two people belonged together and just didn't connect, a professional was brought in. When he'd first met John and Rodney, he'd wished fervently for a Matchmaker, to make them see reason. When they'd sent his Taskmaster away for something so normal as loving a fellow soldier, he'd realized that sometimes you had to be blind to survive. "There was always a blessing. May you live to grow old together."

Rodney put on his cufflinks and stared into the mirror. "The numbers keep getting better for that, actually."

Exile + 3248 Days (8.9 years)

"You've got to be kidding me." Rodney looked at the manifest in his hand. "What is it with the Greek names? Is it too much to ask that these people name a ship after someone who wasn't struck down in his prime by a terrible fate? Someday, when we join a Federation-esque group, they're going to ask us about our ship names and we're going to have to tell them the brass has a thing for Greek tragedy."

"It's not like they named her the Oedipus, Rodney." John looked at the satellite telemetry of the Agamemnon in orbit. "And 'Agamemnon' isn't, in the strictest sense of the word, a Greek tragedy, even though everyone calls it that."

Rodney looked at the blurb that explained the ship's name. "His wife and her boyfriend killed him after he came home from ten years of war. I'd call that a tragedy."

John put an arm around Rodney's waist and drew him in close, like he had that day they'd installed the first ZPM. "A tragedy is when the hero doesn't come home." They were going home.

Nostros (The Return)

There was a woman with a bull horn standing at the end of the disembarkation ramp. "Attention! There are a thousand people waiting to get off the Agamemnon, so please move to the end of the ramp. Earth military personnel wishing to enlist in the 'Lantian military will take a red form, proceed through the red door on your right, and check in with the Major. If you are military personnel seeking permanent residency and then enlistment, take the blue form. If you are a civilian scientist or are seeking asylum from forced military service, take a green form, check the appropriate boxes and go through the green door. If you are part of the Unas/Pennsylvania mining cooperative, please follow the orange line on the floor to temporary quarters. We will be shuttling you to Produ as soon as you clear quarantine."

"Rodney, did we get off on the wrong planet?" They hadn't even landed in the City. The mainland was no longer home to the small settlement of Athosians and a few anthropologists. Intellectually, John had known this. But it was one thing to read a report and another to see for himself. Over the past eight years, they'd built a small, modern city with a docking station, capable of handling Promethus class vessels as well the newer Aurora class.

"Come on. Green form, green door." Rodney started pushing through the crowd, without looking back to see if John was following. "I cannot believe how many people are here now. There were five times more people on that ship than there were in the entire city that first year. At least we won't have to worry about traffic jams on the commute into Atlantis every day. Tokyo traffic is one thing I won't miss."

Someone behind them snorted. "Commute into Atlantis? What turnip truck did the two of you fall off?" The American scientist looked at them over the top edge of his paperback. "Only gate teams and senior scientists go into Atlantis."

"What are you talking about?" John shuffled forward in line, more than a little confused about what the guy had said.

"This is my second fellowship in Pegasus. The only time I was ever allowed in Atlantis was when I got to go on a trading mission." The book went back up and there was the snap of bubble gum. The guy was done with them. "Word to the wise, Noobs. Don't hit on the hologram. Doc Z doesn't like it."

"Right..." John resisted the urge to say, 'Do you know who I am, kid?' and just bit his tongue. It had been a long time. Chances were, outside of the old senior staff, no one here even knew his name. The line moved forward again and John found himself standing in front of a young woman who looked bored and unhappy to have to deal with all these people.

She took the form from his hands and gestured at him with her pen. "Name?"

"Sheppard. John F. Sheppard."

The woman's eyes were the size of saucers and she had flushed red. "Oh my god. The John Sheppard? The one who forged the alliance with the Athosians? The man who flew a nuclear bomb into a hive ship, flew one of the X-302s near the sun without navigation? The man who-"

"Stop reminding him of all his suicide runs! Do you know how hard it was to break him of that habit? Now, the first time I turn my back, he's going to do something stupid and leave me a widow." Rodney slapped his own form down on the table. "Rodney Ingram McKay. Can we go now?" The guy behind them choked on his gum. Rodney shot him a look. "It was my uncle's name. Don't be a jackass."

"No...nono. I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to insult you, sirs. Please don't tell Doctor Weir I was rude. I'll end up studying mold for the next year." The kid looked ready to drop to his knees and beg. "I didn't know it was you."

"Calm down, you're embarrassing yourself." John could hear his name being whispered all down the line. "How do you people even remember us?"

"Sir, everyone on Lantia knows the story about the two of you." The form woman didn't look bored any more. She looked about ready to jump out of her seat. "How you both kept the Atlantis alive those first two years. How when you were forced to leave, Doctor McKay gave up his position and followed you back to Earth. The two of you are like... the ultimate post-modern love story. I have the novel some-"

"Please stop." John met Rodney's eyes. "We've been romance noveled."

"It's worse than that." Everyone was getting out of line and crowding around them. "We're... celebrities." They were crowding in closer. "What the hell is wrong with you people? Get away from us!"

The form woman picked up a walkie talkie. "Hannah, we're going to need a transport into the City asap. It's McKay and Sheppard. They've come back!"

---

"So, who did you sleep with to get him back on board?"

"I take it you've seen the personnel manifest." Elizabeth leaned back in her chair. "Sit down and turn on the sound proofing, Nick."

Nick Lorne sat down and thought 'on'. Then he thought it again, then a third time. Finally, there was that buzz in the back of his head that meant the City had responded. "It's on."

"I didn't seduce General Landry on my last vacation, if that's what you're asking. The Canadians have been trying to get Rodney back from the Japanese for years. They even offered him a position here, but he wouldn't come without John, and the Americans weren't going to give him clearance. We were all waiting for him to make an honest man out of John, so we could bring them both back, but there was just no more time. I gave them a little push."

"A little push." This was the woman who had seeded the atmospheres of dozens of worlds with the retrovirus. She'd considered that a little push. Nick personally thought Elizabeth was a little crazy these days, but with the City dying all around them, who wasn't? "I only knew them for a few months, but neither of them seemed the marrying kind. What kind of push did you give?"

"I bribed the departmental secretaries at Tokyo University. When Rodney and John went to visit Jeanie, they added an appointment with a justice of the peace to the itinerary." Elizabeth was smiling, something that always made Nick nervous.

"That is… truly frightening, Elizabeth." There was a crash from the gate room. "Didn't tell Chuck, did you?"

"I didn't tell anyone." Elizabeth walked over to the glass window that overlooked the gate room. Absolute chaos had broken out as the science crew mobbed John and Rodney. They'd become legends here. "In six months, we're having elections. I like this office. If the two of them can sweet talk the City into actually letting us live here again, I think I might just get to keep it."

---

The doors opened slowly as they made their way to Radek's lab. Hannah had to touch the door panels and concentrate before they'd slide open for her.

"I take it your gene is synthetic?" Rodney made a mental note to stop by the infirmary and get a top up. After eight years, his body had completely renewed itself and his ATA gene was gone. He'd thought they were coming home but everything was different. Even the synthetic gene had changed while they were away. Carson's therapy took in seventy five percent of people now, but it still failed to produce anyone with as much natural ability as John.

"No." They got to a door that would not open, no matter how hard she tried. She slammed on the panel, then took the plate off. "I have the natural gene. Anyone it pops up in gets to do their two years of service here." There was an Israeli flag on her jacket. "Doctor McKay, if you would?"

"Of course." Rodney took a leathermen from his pocket and peered into the circuitry. "There's nothing wrong."

"There never is." Hannah touched the door, stroked it almost. "She doesn't love me. I'm not good enough for her."

Rodney crossed two wires and the door slid open. "You talk like the City is alive. I know it may seem like that but-"

"Things have changed." Hannah tapped on one of the office doors. "Ananke? Are you cohesive?"

A voice with an Eastern European accent came, not through the doors, but through the comm system. "We are interfaced." The voice sounded... familiar, although Rodney couldn't quite place it.

Their pilot made an irritated noise. "Well, materialize. We have important guests." This door slid open with a thought. A short, dark haired woman stood in the middle of the small room. The paneling had been stripped off the walls, exposing all the circuitry.

"Sirs, this is Ananke. The holographic mainframe interface. She'll take care of you until Doc Z gates home." Hannah gave them a smile, which John returned but Rodney was frozen, staring at the hologram. "I'll leave you in Ananke's hands."

"You do that." After she left, Rodney stepped into the room. "This is... This isn't right. What has he done?"

The hologram gave him a small smile and held out both her hands. "Rodney."

"Don't Rodney me. This is... profane, is the only word I can think of. Sick and twisted might work, too." He turned her face from left to right, then tilted it up and looked at her jaw. There was a tiny scar on her jawline, beneath her left ear. Then he examined her right hand. There was an old scar from a burn, right at the base of her thumb. "Do you know who you are?"

"Rodney, the kid just told us-"

"Quiet! I didn't ask you." Rodney didn't let go of the hologram's hand. "Do you know?"

"Of course." She put her other hand on top of the one he was clenching. "I am a personalized holographic interface, in the image of the woman called Krista."

"What does he do with you?" They'd been gone a long time. These people, their friends, weren't the same people they had been. The trust was gone, and this was a good reason why.

"Whatever he wants." She tilted her head in eerie mimicry of the real woman Rodney had known. "I disturb you. This is a new reaction. Your people, in general, find me soothing."

"Most people here weren't at your funeral." Rodney let go of her hands. "You're sentient, I assume. Not just a copy pulled from his mind. You wouldn't be very useful in running the City if you really were Krista."

"You are correct. A cellist would be of little use." The hologram was smiling at him. "I am glad you have returned. There may be hope for Us yet."

"We love the City more than anything. I'd die rather than let her fall." Rodney pushed aside the sickness in his stomach. He hadn't been there, he hadn't been through the war. He had no right to judge what Radek had done here. "John, come say hello."

"Hello? Ten seconds ago, she was profane." John was still carrying his luggage, his hands were ice cold from the strain and his ankle whining about all the walking. "What's going on? Who is she?"

"It's nothing." Rodney took a deep breath. "Status report, please. What is the condition of the City?"

"The City waits for John Sheppard." Her small smile became a grin. "And he has finally come home."

"Yeah, it's good to be back." Rodney still looked kinda horrified, but John couldn't figure out why. "The doors aren't opening. No one lives here any more. Wanna tell me why?"

"For years, the scientists here cursed the lack of a Lantian Google. There is no search function in the database because I am the search function." She made a hand gesture and a view screen popped up, showing an ageless figure with no face. "My original form was faceless, speechless, emotionless. Exactly how the Alterrans wanted their interface. They named me A.N.A.N.K.E. I would tell you what it stood for, but it does not translate. But I am more than Google. I am interfaced to the Mainframe. I am the City, and she is me. Or so it was, before. Radek awakened me and thought I was damaged. He linked the interface with the holographic companion generator. The device leached my form from his mind." Ananke touched her hair, her face. "It gave me this flesh. It gave me his memories of her. It gave me emotion. Love, pain, despair. We had known love, in a way, for the two of you. You woke us up, you loved us. We had known pain. The City had been damaged many times. But despair... We had never known despair. Atlantis became convinced she was going to die."

"I don't understand."

Ananke seemed to notice the way John was favoring his ankle. "Let me get you a chair." She ducked out of the room and came back in with two of the heavy wooden chairs the Athosians made. She carried them like they were weightless. "You must understand that for a moment, we became Krista. Her hopes, her dreams, her fears. Radek's last memories of her terrified the City. He disconnected me from the main systems, but it was too late."

"Do you have to be cryptic and vague?" John sat down heavily and looked up at Rodney. "Translate from computer to English for me."

"Krista died of lymphatic cancer. It was slow. We had to sit there and watch her die." Rodney sat beside him and rubbed his face with his hands a couple times. "The City thinks she has cancer. She's shutting down, trying to protect the central spire. The brain. Like a body fighting cancer."

"Radek does not possess the ATA gene. His memory is a cancer. A foreign body, poisoning the City. We must cut it out of her. I can think of no one better than the two of you." A schematic appeared out of thin air. "There is a secondary control chair in the 3rd District. Together, I hope we can convince the City that the only threat is herself."

-----

What Happened

They had Rodney hooked up to an oxygen and an IV. His eyes were closed when Elizabeth pulled back the curtain, but they flickered open after a minute. "What happened?"

Elizabeth steadied her nerves. "He tried to kill you. His mission was to kill you."

Rodney shook his head violently. "No. No, that's not possible. John-"

"That man was not John Sheppard, not the John we know. He was crazy, Rodney. I think maybe he was crazy before he even got here." She picked up one of Rodney's hands and squeezed it. "He fooled all of us."

"Why would he want to kill me?"

"There was an occurrence at the SGC not too long ago. Dopplegangers came through, stole a ship and headed here. They wanted our ZPM. That could only mean that their own Atlantis had fallen. Whatever he told you, Rodney, however he made you trust him? That was a lie. It never happened. His Atlantis fell to the Wraith."

----

What Could Have Happened

Rodney had gotten John, Radek had gotten six months as a prisoner of the Genii. He came back with radiation poisoning and a cancerous tumor in his hip. "Is ironic, yes?"

"In the Alanis Morriset way, I suppose." Rodney took the offered cup of coffee from Radek's shaky hands. "Ananke is... How can you stand it?"

"I have no choice. I cannot function in Atlantis without her. I still lack the gene." Radek poured two packets of sugar into his own coffee and stirred. "I have come to think of her as comfort for a dying man. I know she is not Krista, but I can see those little glimpses. The things I missed the most."

"I don't think I can work with her. John thinks she's wonderful, now that he's figured out how she interacts with his sensory perceptions." Rodney, sitting in what had been his office, could almost pretend it was old times, if Radek didn't look emaciated and half dead. "Could we change her appearance?"

"I would rather you waited. I will be dead in less than six months." Radek rubbed at his hip, as if that could take away the pain. "I refused to go home for treatment. Carson has tried other things, but I... We have been grossly overexposed to radiation. Too many nukes, too many accidents. We knew this was a possibility."

"John wants to interface with the City tomorrow." Rodney toyed with one of the devices on Radek's desk. It glowed in his hands. "My gene therapy took."

"I have broken my promise to you. I did not take good care of the city."

"It's immaterial, Zelenka." The device flared to life, throwing a building schematic up on the wall. "She didn't take very good care of you, either."

----

What Happened

Gate Team 1, minus their scientist, strolled through the Gate right on schedule. John was holding a ZPM, Ronon and Teyla both had take-home boxes the size of suitcases. "Elizabeth missed one hell of a dinner. Chuck, did you know-"

"Doctor McKay is the infirmary." The gate technician cut him off. "Your counterpart tried to kill him."

John threw the ZPM at Chuck and tore out of the gate room.


End file.
